Chapter Nine: Bygone Remnants

"So why do you have moss?"

"Because I'm a healer, probably," Anders replied, stepping over a collection of jutting roots as he walked. It was mid-afternoon and they had been hiking for hours, each of them on the alert. They had a vague idea of where they were going, but no idea what they would find. Anders had his hand-drawn recreation map in his head, going over the position of each X-mark once every five minutes to make sure he was right, because that's exactly where they couldn't set foot. As it stood, he was fairly certain they were in the middle of them, heading straight through the corridor of fires which appeared to be trying to surround Reaver's Oasis. Either they would see the next fire, or they would encounter those responsible for starting them.

Or, they would get lost and end up at the sea. Any way they went, something was going to give. They just had to wait.

"Moss has uses in the healing arts," Anders explained further, ducking under a group of low-hanging branches. The small, grey feathers that decorated his pauldrons had collected a few hitchhiker seeds, but if Anders noticed he didn't make to remove them. "It can be used as a bandage, if necessary," he went on, "and it absorbs liquids. It's really quite something."

Mabel nodded, and Anders could hear her earrings clinking behind him as he lead them on. "So what about the clover? It's totally lucky, right?"

"Don't ask me," Naoya shrugged. "Maybe it's just pretty."

"Actually," Remus added from the rear, "from what I know of leprechauns, the clover can represent one who can see 'things that are unseen,' a sixth-sense, as it were. Psychic powers. And, you're right, Mabel: it is commonly thought to bring good luck."

"Lucky me, then," Naoya chirped. "I have both of those things."

"Then what about those purple flowers?" Mabel asked finally. "They're really pretty."

"This is aconite," said Remus. His voice was faint, as he was continually turning to vanish the plant trails with his wand. "It's more commonly known as wolfsbane."

Mabel paused, waiting to pick one before it was destroyed by the wand. She did not seem to have a fear of magic, which was of much relief. "What does it symbolize?"

Remus' face remained neutral, even if his emotions did not. "It is—," he started, pausing to consider his words. "It's—"

Naoya's eyes widened as it clicked, and he suddenly let out a high-pitched laugh. "It's because he doesn't like dogs," he said.

Mabel gasped. "You don't like dogs? But they're so cute! How can you not like dogs?"

Remus let out an inaudible sigh.

Mabel moved on in short time, and she tucked the helmet-shaped aconite behind her ear, wedging the stem in her headband so it wouldn't come loose. It bounced up and down with her hair as she walked. "Oh, oh! What about me? What about my plant?"

From the head of the line, Anders shook his head. "I don't recognize it."

"Neither do I," Naoya admitted.

Mabel looked back to Remus, her pleading eyes wide.

"Did none of you ever take a potions class?" Remus started to ask, but he supposed not. "I'm fairly certain that your plant is witch hazel."

"Witch hazel," Mabel repeated. "Like, 'wizard'?"

Remus smiled, understanding what she was hinting at. "It's difficult to say," he grinned. "But you never know. You would already have attended school in my homeland, though I'm not sure how the Americans do their schooling."

"But what could it mean?"

"Wisdom, perhaps. Emotional understanding. And healing, too. I'm not sure. It's been so long since I studied any of this." It seemed like centuries since he had been in a classroom to Remus, but in truth it had been just shy of a decade. The realization was humbling.

"You mean I might be able to heal people, too?" Mabel's eyes were alite.

"Maybe Anders can make you his apprentice someday," Remus smiled.

"That depends," Anders replied. "Do you have any abilities, Mabel?"

Mabel took a gasping breath, her fingers raising pointedly to reply. But when she opened her mouth, she paused. Her face sank. "Well, I'm really good with clothes," she murmured.

"Me too!" Naoya smiled at her, which seemed to bring her back around. But Anders and Remus exchanged looks.

After perhaps another hour's walk, they reached a small spring where they settled to refill their single canteen. It was the same here as it had been during their last venture through the forest: many footprints, some unidentifiable, littered the small, sandy shoreline. But the water was crisp and cool, and they did not argue when it promised such relief. They had only the one bag from Nadine to carry and Remus slung it over his shoulder and let himself slide down the trunk of an old oak and come to rest in the clutches of it's welcoming roots. His body was tired, and though he didn't feel his stomach gurgling hunger drained his every cell like a vampiric bite. Despite objection from their resident healer, Remus had refused to let Anders heal any of his wounds and he sank into his exhaustion, nearly drifting off as he relaxed. But he straightened his back, forcing himself to be alert.

Anders was not content to sit. He placed his staff against the trunk beside Remus, but paced back and forth in a small circle as a restlessness dug into him. He had always been an anxious person. His confidence was a lie, as was so much of his outward portrayal that sometimes Anders couldn't tell who he really was. But the truth of the matter was that he had no idea where he was leading them, just as they had no idea where they were going. Just walking, hoping to land in a broad area—it would be a miracle if they found anyone at all. And now that they had a child to feed as well, the need for something to happen was pressing on his thoughts without cease. He caressed his chin with his thumb, feeling stubble that had grown soft in the days since he had had a good bath or shave. It made him cringe.

Naoya splashed his face with water while Mabel took a drink of the filtered water in the canteen. His brow was dotted with little beads of sweat, half from walking through the mid-day heat and half from the pain that still sank into his core from the wound he tried not to say a single word about for Remus' sake. He took a quick look around, trying to sense anything potentially hostile before he let himself relax. The sunlight filtering down from the canopy was an inviting yellow that illuminated seeds floating like snowflakes through the darkness under the leaves, and Naoya watched one float by in the distance, caught in a lazy breeze.

But it was Mabel who spotted what all three of them failed to notice. "Look over there!"

Almost invisible tucked between the many trees, a red and blue window made of stained glass reflected the sun in just the right direction to catch a child's eye. Nearly lost to the unending consumption of nature, a building—intact and strong—stood in defiance of the trees surrounding it like hungry wolves. Anders offered Remus a hand, pulling his friend up as together they strode off directly towards it. In a few swipes of wand and staff, most of the vegetation consuming the structure was felled and sunlight burned the white exterior for the first time in what was evidently many, many months.

"A windmill," Anders said, shoving aside a large, overly thorny branch that earned a cross growl under his breath.

"It looks hardly over a decade old," Remus commented, and Anders was forced to agree. The coating covering the sides of the angled structure was chipping, but not nearly so rotten that it gave the appearance of disrepair. The beams above the door were solid, the knob relatively unrusted, and the blades of the massive windmill itself sported only a few holes, probably ripped apart in a good storm. They looked as though they hadn't moved in a while, though, but that hardly meant anything when vines hung in clumps from the mechanism in the center.

"It's far too new to be abandoned," Remus added, taking out his wand and waving it in front of him. "Homenum Revelio!" Nothing happened, and Remus licked his lips. He tried again, and and still there was nothing. Remus frowned, more in confusion than in distaste. He turned back to the others, who were waiting expectantly. "Other than the four of us, we are alone."

"I don't sense anyone," Naoya confirmed at Mabel's side. "Or anything, either."

"Nor I." Anders crossed his arms over his staff, pressing his head against the cool metal. This didn't make sense. Such overgrowth, for a building that was younger than Mabel? He sighed. "I suppose that means we must investigate."

"I'll go," said Remus before Anders could offer, carefully approaching the door and twisting the handle. The cold metal gave a jerk, but refused to turn. Carefully, Remus pushed, and then pulled on the door with one hand while twisting the handle with the other. It didn't budge. Well, he thought, at least that was a good sign. If it really was abandoned, maybe the insides remained undisturbed. He pointed his wand tip at the knob nonetheless, whispering, "Alohomora!"

The lock beneath the lock lit up from within with a small flash of golden light, jiggling against it's hinges for a tiny second. And then the door swung open as if commanded, slowly creaking on disused hinges. Remus stepped inside.

"Hello?"

The room was stale and covered with dust, and Remus' voice did not carry. It was circular, with a small kitchen on one side and a living area on another, separated by a surface of cabinets and drawers topped with a tile counter. A soft couch, still adorned with a knitted blanket folded over the back, sat awaiting someone to sit on it, and a bookshelf with a colorful collection of unread novels waited eagerly to be flipped through. Just beyond the counter and into the kitchen, Remus was able to make out a small stove and a shelf packed with sacs marked FLOUR and OATS. But the rest of the kitchen was lost in shadow. Just to Remus' right, a staircase spiraled up the length of the wall and up to the second floor, which Remus suspected held the gears of the windmill blades but also a small bedroom.

"It's all clear," he said, returning to the others. "Rather dusty, but that should clean up in a jiff."

"I don't understand how," Anders warned, "but look there,"—he pointed to an area of lumpy, yet squared off ground. "That looks like it was farm land not long ago. The area is much too angular to be natural. And this building is far too new for the forest to be so thick. I don't like this."

"What if the forest is... alive, or something," Mabel said, staring into the trees.

Naoya looked down at her curiously. "Or... something. You're right. But this whole section of wood has a really weird feel to it. The building feels older than these trees."

That didn't make any of them feel more at ease. But the sun would be setting soon, and mutual frowns did nothing beyond confirm their worst thoughts: none of them had a better alternative than here to camp for the night. As it stood, the food, water and shelter was potentially the luckiest find in the history of man, even if it was equally as unsettling. It was a mansion compared to their little alcove miles away.

"There's a fireplace," Remus' voice came from within, and Anders saw light chasing away the shadows as Remus held his lit wand overhead. "We'll be warm, at least."

"Look," Naoya shrugged, turning away from the windmill, "why don't you guys secure this place for the night with all your magic nonsense? I might not be good in the woods, but I know we'll need a fire. Mabel and I can go collect some wood so we don't freeze."

Anders nodded. "Good idea, but don't take too long. And don't go too far, alright?"

The last he saw of the pair was them waving goodbye, before their bodies disappeared into the overhanging branches.

Naoya disliked the woods. It was too quiet, there were no buildings or stores or anything he could be useful with. In all his seventeen years he had never been outside of Tokyo, and while forests were important to the planet and pretty in theory - he disliked the uncertainty of them.

The EGO race and the Organization that made of the backbone of their faction thrived alongside technology and concrete; they had built electric empires of skyscrapers, run by computers and cellphones,- all in the hundred years of their species' existence. The magic-users and inhuman races all had to adapt to the spreading metropolis, less they lost valuable turf and resources in the War.

Naoya Itsuki was bred to be an urban survivalist, not a wilderness one.

But as Naoya pushed a low-laying branch out of the way, he knew that they shouldn't go too far. Movies, TV, and the few books he'd bothered to read had taught him that much. Getting lost in the woods would be a nightmare for him.

Mabel marched ahead of him, head held high as she went on about how the wood they needed to find was supposed to be dry and not "green". Naoya merely followed, his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.

"You seem to know your stuff," Naoya commented, and Mabel looked back at him with a confident flash of her braces.

"'Course," she beamed. "Grunkle Stan doesn't like to pay for heat on the nights when it gets chilly, so we borrow wood from some of his neighbors, or we go out and get some from the forest."

"'Borrow' meaning 'steal'?"

"He says: 'it's not stealing if they don't know it's gone'," Mabel quoted her great uncle.

Naoya chuckled. It half-sounded like something his mother would say. "Sounds like he's teaching you some valuable things."

"Yeah," she went on, picking up a stick and waving it enthusiastically. "He teaches some pretty good life lessons to me and Dip-" but she stopped, her frame sinking as she let out the breath she would have used on the word.

"Dip-?" Naoya asked, stopping. He could feel her happy confidence suddenly bottling up, and being replaced with some kind of grief… and at the center of it was anger. He knew the direction her feelings were directed all too well: sibling troubles.

Mabel's face scrunched and she broke eye contact. "Bad stuff. I don't wanna talk about it," she mumbled, her messy brown hair falling out of place as she turned away. "Let's just get the wood…"

"Mabel, who's 'Dip'?" Naoya gently asked, his tone soft yet knowing.

She looked back at him, her brown eyes watery.

"No, no, don't cry!" Naoya waved his hands in front of him. "I won't ask anymore, promise. I know I don't like to talk about my sister when I'm upset with her."

Mabel studied him, sniffing back the wave of tears she had started. "Y-you have a sister?"

Naoya half-grunted, nodding. "Yeah, we're twins," he said, holding up two fingers. "But I'm older by ten minutes."

Mabel's eyes widened, excitement coming back to her. "Dipper and I are twins, too," she gasped. "And I'm also older than him by ten minutes!"

"Well, well," Naoya smiled, putting his hands on his hips. He was confident that the crying crisis had been avoided. "What are the odds of that."

"I know, right?" Mabel ran over to him, hooking on to his arm. "Tell me about your sister! What's her name? Does she have cool mutant powers like you? Is she pretty like you? What does she look like?"

Naoya gently patted her shoulder and let her hang onto him, and they continued walking as they searched for wood. "Well," he started, trying to find the words. Even back home he was still getting used to talking about her casually. "Her name is Haruna. She has powers that are a little different than mine; and unlike me and our mom, she can do telepathy. And of course she is. We look the same for the most part, the only real difference is that she has really long hair like yours and her hair is a little more red than mine."

"Your mom has powers too?"

"Mhm. Like everyone in my family, she's very strong. And trust me, if you think a human mom is bad when she's mad, don't make an psychic mom upset," he laughed.
It was entirely true. His mother, Kana; his aunts, Yume and Mina; his grandmother, Sarashina… all scary, entirely in the metaphysical sense. One time he had encountered a psychic woman - a mother of a dear friend - who had been dead for ten years and her consciousness was still plenty aware, and was "living" inside her daughter's repressed memories. Naoya shivered thinking about it.

"What about your dad?"

Naoya took in a sharp breath through his nose. "I don't know about him. Never met him."

"Oh," Mabel's smile vanished, realizing what she had probably just asked about.

"Don't feel bad," Naoya reassured him. "About 85% of my species is female. A lot of us never meet our dads, it's pretty common. I'm lucky enough to know he was from Los Angeles, and because Haruna can use telepathy - then he probably can as well."

She pouted admirably, trying to imagine it. "You're all mostly girls?"

"85% female, 14% male, 1% other."

"Other?"

"EGO who don't want to be either a boy or a girl."

"Oh. Of course," Mabel nodded approvingly.

Quite some distance from the children, the two mages were hard at work. It was not enough to firm the structure and protect it—not when they didn't even know who built it, or worse. Maker save the poor sod who died here, or perhaps they who resided in it now if they should come back. There was no stench of death and the forest was calm surrounding them, but still.
"What are you doing there?" Anders had been watching Remus for some time. His own magic had come to it's complete usefulness long ago, but Remus had kept pacing up and down the structure, walking around the borders, inside and out. As much as it made Anders feel as useless as dwarf in a magical contest, it was also a chance to study magic that was outside his norm.
Remus stopped mid-step, turning to him at his query.

"This? It's just a protection charm," he explained, quickly finishing the creation of the ward around the outside of the windmill's front door with a quiet whisper. Anders watched him work, scrutinizing the disturbance in the air wherever his wand pointed: it was as though he was generating the haze of a great heat source, or disturbing the surface of some strange, thick fluid.

"You've used quite a few," Anders noted. "How many are there?"

"Many, though it depends on what you want your spells to do, really," Remus explained. He backed away from the door, picked up a fist-sized stone and played with it in his hands for a moment, tossing it up and down fondly. But he gave it a sad look with the raise of his brow, and with a quick twist of his arm Remus threw the rock full speed towards the doorway. Upon contact with an invisible barrier, it burst into molten flames and promptly disintegrated. "That one should protect us from anyone or anything hostile that reaches the door," he said. "It would have to break the other wards first, however."

Anders whistled, his ears slightly pink. Remus was nearly stepping on the rune he had carved into the steps, and although it pulsed with a threatening power it felt somehow mundane. "I never learned anything quite like that," he said, his fingertips brushing the back of his neck.

"Perhaps you could," Remus offered suddenly, a curious glint in his eyes. "I do have one more charm to cast, and to be honest I have been wondering about the differences between our magicks for some time."

"You aren't suggesting what I think you are?"

Remus nodded. "Aren't you curious?"

Anders felt his staff pressing against his shoulders as it hung securely across his back. He inhaled, letting the image of a fireball fill his thoughts and hardly wasting breath when immense heat spilled across his open palm. He held the fireball up, demonstrating it. "I'm not sure I could. Much of my magic is elemental," he explained. "And there isn't much study beyond defense in the Circle. Everything must be approved, documented, studied... The First Enchanters are more concerned about teaching apprentices to fight demons than they are much else, though sometimes we learn to enchant things on our own. They want us to control our powers, not explore them."

"It's just the opposite for us," Remus replied. "We take courses in defense, but the average witch or wizard needn't learn combative techniques. What is your staff made of? What is it's core?"

"It's just red steel," Anders said. "Hardly special."

Remus frowned. He turned his wand over in his hand, extending it handle-first to Anders. "Try this."

Anders gave Remus a skeptical glance, but took the wand nonetheless. But his mouth opened slightly as the mana in his body seemed to hum excitedly: where Freedom's Call was a tunnel for mana, a dead channel for energy, Remus' wand was already surrounded by a strange aura.

"What is this?" he asked, glancing up to Remus. "It feels..."

"Alive?" Remus asked. "I don't feel anything anymore, but I'm not surprised that you do. Many wands react to new hands—when I was searching for mine as a boy, I nearly set a bookshelf on fire with a flick of the wrist because the wand did not want me to be it's owner. It was quite something. 'The wand chooses the wizard,' they say. I don't understand it myself, but you say your staff is merely a channel for you, correct? My wand is not alive, but it can make decisions. It is," Remus paused, "... very hard to explain. It knows my tactics. It can respond before I do. It is like an extension of me, of my magic. I suspect that it may allow you to cast spells if you practice with it, but I question whether I could use your staff. Wandless magic is rare where I come from."

Anders quietly unhitched his staff, extending it to Remus. "Let's find out. What do I need to do?"

"Will it," Remus shrugged. "Try something easy. Wave it towards one of those trees," he said, pointing across the camp.

Anders felt like a bloody idiot waving a stick through the air, but he complied nonetheless. Red sparks shot out of the wand tip, sizzling into nothing as they landed like spent embers across the ground.

Remus was practically beaming. "Excellent! Excellent. Let's see if you can cast a proper spell." He demonstrated the precise movement with his wrists, teaching Anders an incantation it took him a few minutes to master. "Give it a go."

Setting his sights on a pebble some feet away, Anders once again gave the wand a wave. "Accio pebble!"

But rather than flying towards him, the earth beneath the rock exploded into a shower of dirt and fallen pine needles, and both men covered their heads. In the silence that followed, Anders blinked, his face a deep red. He hadn't failed this badly since he was a new apprentice, twelve or perhaps thirteen-years-old. But Remus burst out laughing.

"Don't worry," he said after a moment, catching his breath. "This is not a bad sign."

Anders rolled his eyes. "I just blew a hole in the ground." The bucket-sized hole was still smouldering.

"Yes, that's true," Remus nodded. "But it means that your magic can be channeled by my wand. With practice, you might be able to cast spells the same as I do."

Anders' grin turned from something sheepish into something pleased. He examined the wand in his grip with a new fervor, yearning to try again. "What of my staff?" he asked, nodding his head towards Remus. "Do you think you could use it?"

Now it was Remus' turn to feel less than ready. The staff was cold and unresponsive in his fingers, and it was heavier than he had originally thought. "I'm not sure. As I said, wandless magic is nearly unheard of where I come from."

"But you can cast spells without an incantation," Anders noted.

"Some," Remus admitted. "Though even that takes immense skill."

"Don't tell me you're nervous," Anders teased, and Remus bit his lip.

"How do you learn to use a staff?" he asked, putting some distance between he and the mage so as to swing the staff back and forth. Merlin, it was a fine weapon indeed, magic or no.

"Gut feel, and instinct," Anders said. Remus gave him a look, and Anders shrugged. "The Circle is not as wonderful a place for mages as they profess."

Remus sighed, his brow giving an aporetic roll.

Anders put his hands up, his expression suddenly serious. He took the staff from Remus and remounted it to his shoulders. "Alright," he said, "try this: hold out one hand and close your eyes, and imagine you are full of light, or energy. Can you feel it?"

Remus nodded slowly. "Yes."

"Good. That's a good start."

Remus could hear Anders' boots crunching softly against fallen leaves as he circled him, the sound becoming strangely muted mere seconds after initial footfall. In his mind's eye, he could see the moss spreading from Anders' black boots. "Now what?"

"Now," Anders said, "focus on that. Make it bigger. It should be warm inside your core."

After a pause, Remus replied. "Alright."

"Can you take that collection of energy and move it through your body? Feel it warming your chest, and then maybe your arm?" Remus nodded. "Good. Bring that sensation down into the center of your palm, and let it build there. And when it feels like you might start to lose it, let it leave your hand. Let it flow into the air, but hold it in your grip. Imagine an apple in your fist when you do."

Anders watched Remus' face contort with effort, and his fingers graced the open air above Remus' extended palm. It was warm, but not nearly anything close to a fire. Suddenly, Remus opened his eyes and the air went ice cold.

"I lost it," Remus explained. "I lost focus."

"I would have been amazed if you had gotten it on your first try," Anders said. "Most mages don't get fire right for a good few lessons."

Remus looked to Anders, an odd expression growing. "But?"

"But," Anders went on, "this was... impressive. You did heat the air." He paused. "Next time, don't think so much about moving your hands. Focus more on moving the energy, directing it's flow."

They nodded at one another, both equally satisfied and strangely curious. It was a good start, though the start of what neither could say. The mere fact that they may be able to use other forms of magic was impressive in and of itself, not to mention the fascinating topics opened up by the idea of sharing techniques. As Remus finished the last of his protective work, Anders watched on with renewed interest, now studying the fluidity of the wand movements as well as the spell itself.

"Hey," a voice broke some time later as the sun was nearly set. "I can sense the barriers. I'm not going to like... explode, if I come over there, am I?" Naoya and Mabel were just in view on the opposite side of the camp, both sets of arms laden with bundles of sticks.

"No," Remus said, waving them in. "You'll be fine."

The air shimmered around them like a bubble as they entered, and Mabel gasped. "It tickles," she giggled.

Their dinner that night was slightly better than the last. The stream provided a few fish, and they stumbled upon a bag of rice in the kitchen of the windmill. And after their time in the woods, none of them complained that it was slightly chewy to the tongue as they ate off of real plates and drank from genuine cups for the first time since Reaver. With nothing left to do, they gathered around the fire pit under the stars and chatted the night away. It was a rather nice change, though nobody expected it to last for long. Still, the topic was left untouched. They were tired. They were pained. They needn't drag themselves through the mud while they had food in their bellies and good company to keep.

After dinner and a few pleasant stories by the fire, however, the tone of the evening had shifted. Once again, a silence permeated the air even as it was filled with steam rising from another brew of mint tea.

"So... um," Mabel muttered after some time, "what... what is this place? What are we doing here? And why is the sky like that?" Her voice broke, and her teary eyes glistened with the light of the heavens overhead. "Am I dreaming?"

By now, none of the older men were put of by the question, but they did exchange looks before putting down their cups. Anders disappeared into the windmill house, collecting the blanket from the back of the couch and returning to drape it across her shoulders as Naoya bundled up beside her.

"Well," Remus began, "it is... a long story."

Long after the bonfire had burnt out, the four of them had retired into the windmill as thick clouds rolled in overhead and blotted out the moon. The voices of a thousand crickets could be heard faintly from the windows, and occasionally a bestial scream or howl broke through the night. Deep inside their ring of barriers, the lonely sight of four humans tucked into an old structure would barely be noticed by the true inhabitants of the forest.

Naoya and Mabel had long ago retreated to the newly cleaned bedroom upstairs, leaving the two older men alone in the living area below. They had spent a good hour flipping through useless novels and further examining the interior of the windmill before deciding that it was a decidedly futile endeavor and planted themselves on the single couch.

The single couch that only one of them could sleep on, though the subject had as yet been avoided.

"Something the matter, Remus?"

"Hm?" Brought out of the reverie so suddenly, Remus blinked. The afterimage of the candle beside the couch blurred Anders' face as Remus met his gaze. "Oh, no, I was just thinking of something from a few days ago," he said. "Something Alastor said before everything went pear shaped."

"Oh?" Anders had taken the tie out of his hair and had begun running his fingernails over his scalp. He appeared mildly interested in he conversation when he was not torn away like a cat scratched behind the ears.

"Indeed," Remus nodded seriously. "I had forgotten about it until recently, because it seemed so outlandish and it was rather useless to us overall. But now, I wonder if it isn't worth some further thought." Anders' face was now hidden by a wall of golden hair. Remus tried not to smile in amusement, though one hand did stray and scratch the nape of his neck. "Alastor said that Reaver was terrified of Naoya."

Had Anders been drinking, he would have choked. "What?" He pushed his hair back behind his ears to look Remus in he eye. "You're joking."

Remus shook his head. "He could have used Naoya to achieve his goal, but he didn't. He couldn't use me, and you were openly opposed to everything he stood for. Naoya is a young boy, someone who might have been persuaded much easier than you. However, Reaver went out of his way to abuse us. You and I were locked away, but Naoya was barricaded in the comfort of his room. Reaver went out of his way not to incur displeasure on Naoya's part until the very end, it seems. My question is why."

Anders scratched his stubble, feeling the many prickly hairs growing much too long and he ached for a hot bath. "That is... odd," he mused, though the proper word eluded him. The thought of a man as vile as Reaver shaken to the core by a twig such as Naoya was nothing short of bizarre. "Reaver did say we had a purpose here."

"Yes," said Remus. "That's true... but I heavily suspect that half, if not all of what he said, should be taken with a grain of salt."

Anders gave a raise of his brow in agreement, though he did not respond right away. He gave a stiff, tired sigh, rubbing his thigh where the knife blade had seared into his flesh. It stung at the mention of Reaver's name, though in a few more days there would be no sign of it at all. "Maybe he's right, though."

"How so?"

Anders sucked on his bottom lip before replying. "We do have plant trails, something neither Reaver nor any of the balverines possessed. And now we've come into a young girl who I saw fall from a portal in the sky. I saw the other side of the portal, Remus-it was another world, another forest. 'California,' did she say?"

"Oregon," Remus corrected him, though Anders waved it away.

"I don't want to agree with Reaver. But the way we all fell into this world, the way we have plants... maybe we are indeed marked for some purpose. Maybe there is a reason after all. And whatever reason that is, maybe it's a part of Reaver's destiny too."

Remus considered this, taking another slow draught from his now-cold mint tea. "What do you think Reaver fears the most?"

Anders gave a slight, jovial snort into his mug. "He acts like he's afraid of nothing."

"Yes, but all men fear something. Each of us has our own boggart- ah, I'll explain later," he added, when Anders gave him a look at the word 'boggart.' "What would a man who has such power at his disposal truly fear deep inside?"

"Perhaps that such power was not good enough for his aims," Anders suggested. "Perhaps that he could not defeat his enemy."

"Reaver is hundreds of years old. He has far too many enemies to count, no doubt."

Anders nodded, but his brow knit when a strange thought occurred to him. "Perhaps his enemy is not something one can defeat."

Remus caught Anders' gaze, the thought clicking immediately. "You don't think-"

"It could be. What if?"

"Reaver's greatest enemy," Remus whispered, "is death."

"Reaver was a crazy, old man with a young man's face," came a voice from the staircase.

Naoya descended the old steps, his arms folded across his chest. He wasn't smiling, and there was a strange wary observance in his eyes. "Al said Reaver was cooped up there for a long time. He was so desperate to get out that he went a little nuts."

"There's no questioning that," Anders replied. "We were all subject to his particular brand of sadism."

"All," Remus said, "save you. Your experience was harrowing as well as ours, but you were kept at an arms length. Something about you kept Reaver from doing you more harm than necessary."

"I know that," Naoya answered, finally reaching the bottom step. "I'm a good talker; I'm not human; it could be anything. I'm saying he was crazy and we might never understand why." He studied them both, looking at them as if he had every secret known to man and he was content to keep it for himself. "Mabel's asleep," he began after the silence in the air had become just the right level of awkwardness. "I think I know why she was so terrified when she fell through the portal." He paused, then added: "Other than falling from the sky and being approached by three strangers."

Remus was watching Naoya, watching his mannerisms. "That would be terrifying enough to a twelve year old," he said. "And you think the poor girl went through something more?"

Naoya's face was as serious as his tone, something unusual for the teen. "She told me earlier that she has a twin brother," he replied. "And from what I felt of her emotions, something bad happened to him."

The magi exchanged looks. Naoya hated when they did that.

"That is worrisome," Anders nodded. "But there's nothing we can do about that now except console her."

"And hope for the best, until we can find her a way home," Remus finished.

Naoya shook his head. They weren't understanding. His cheeks scrunched as he thought about how to phrase his next few words. "Someone got hurt." Naoya looked at them. "And she did it. Those are the feelings I got from her. Whatever it was, Mabel was directly responsible - but she's upset by it, she has too much remose for it to have been anything other than an accident."

The bridge of Anders' nose wrinkled as he frowned. "Are you saying she killed him?"

"You two were both the 'only child', weren't you," Naoya sighed. "She loves her brother. But whatever happened between them was fresh when she fell through the veil, and it's tormenting her. She did something and it ended up hurting him. She's not okay." He paused, realization donning on him, then looked at Anders. "... Didn't you say you saw fire in the middle of the portal?"

"I did," Anders nodded. "Maybe she set the fire, then? I've known twelve-year-olds to accidentally destroy something when they can't control their emotions."

"Whatever it was," Remus said, his chin cupped between two thumbs, "I suppose it no longer matters. Not immediately, anyway—not now, not once she came here."

Anders' head tilted to show his agreement. "Unfortunately, that's true. It could be the same for all of us: whatever we were doing before we came here, it's not important. We just have to focus on the now, focus on locating the Firestarters. As long as we can help Mabel through her grief, our priority should be her survival."

"Survival's a heck of a thing to force on a kid," Naoya commented, but Anders made no motion to deny it.

"Of course," he said slowly, "but this is no place for her. This windmill may have been the luckiest find of the entire Age, but it is no home for three wanderers and a child who have no idea where they are or how to get home. We can worry about her happiness when we have something solid to give her. We need hope."

"We found her, we saved her! We're all she has right now - we might not have any ourselves, but we're her hope at the moment."

"Yes," Remus muttered, "a werewolf, a teenager, and a mage." It was meant to himself, but he knew when he received a cold glance from Naoya that it had carried.

"If you want to be accurate, it's two teenagers," Naoya added, his feminine voice sharp. "Who have feelings, just like the mage and just like the wizard." His eyes narrowed and the bags underneath them made him seem far more weary than anything.

Silence. Always with the silences. Anders' head pounded. He swore under his breath. "Let's end this," he said, standing up and brushing off the front of his robes. "We're all right-all of us. Each point is valid and needs addressing but we're all exhausted. We all need rest. And maybe instead of this endless bickering, we can come back in he morning with fresh eyes. Let's not fight," he finished. "Not again."

Remus dragged his fingers down across his face, scratching at stubble he would rather not have been present. He gave a stiff shudder, nodding curtly. Standing, he approached Naoya. "I am… sorry," he said. "I admit with everything happening lately that perhaps I was too… cold. I find myself focusing more on survival over anything else. You may be right."

Naoya stared right at him, no - it felt more like Naoya was staring into him. "I am right." He haughtily straightened himself, turning and heading back up the stairs. "Now if you two can, like, stop talking about other people loud enough so that they can hear you upstairs, we should all get some sleep."For the briefest of moments, footsteps could be heard pacing the circular room above before fading into the creaking of a bed. Remus and Anders said nothing for a long time.

Whether it was an hour or a minute that passed after that, neither of them could say. But the time passed in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts. The idea that they had been fighting so often of late was disturbing. They were a team, after all—a team born from necessity and burden, but a team nonetheless. Perhaps some strife was to be expected after Reaver, and then the lack of proper food, sleep, or shelter... In fact, all things considered, they were doing remarkably well. But unease ate away them nonetheless.

Why hadn't they seen any sign of the Firestarters? Why was this building in the middle of nowhere, consumed by the trees? And what was happening between the group? Dynamics were changing. They were changing. So much had happened to them in the past two weeks, the future was next to impossible to predict. It was that fact that kept the candle lit for quite some time, finally going out in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of the crickets.

The following morning was damp and chilly. Hints of a small rain overnight was splashed across the leaves and left fog to roll across the forest floor with the threat of a crisp fog very strong despite the promise of the spring season. Bending down to clear the dead leaves from the foundation stones of the windmill, Remus couldn't help but shiver in the air. Spring though it may have been, it was not warm enough, not yet. He had been studying the area for anything strange, anything out of the ordinary. A windmill does not come out of nowhere. And yet, as far as he could tell, there were no more signs of life out in this vast forest other than the humans stuck out of time and place.

"Anything?" Anders' voice was distant, from somewhere on the other side of the building.

"Nothing yet," he replied, scraping away some of the grit and moss that had overtaken some of the stones. Part of him had hoped to find a date, or perhaps even a name. But this building was less a farm and more a special, decorative home, by the look of it and would bear no exterior marking. There was no sign that the interior had held any wind-powered grinding stones for grain—merely that it was as it appeared: a personal home. And even that was mysterious in it's own right: for all the dried goods they had been able to scavenge off of the last night or so, there were no personal effects. No photographs, no paintings, no identifying markers that would otherwise indicate who may have lived here before apparently abandoning the entire plot. Remus frowned, returning to full height and glancing across the trees. Behind him, the door of the windmill creaked open and a pair of steps hurried down into the grass.

"We're heading out to get some firewood," Naoya announced as he and Mabel began to cross the yard, scattering seeds into the air as they pushed aside patches of tall grasses and weeds that bordered the yard.

"Later!" Mabel chirped, her tone much more joyous than the teen's. Remus suspected he was still bitter about last night, taking a long breath. Mabel's sleeve flopped back and forth over her hand as she waved goodbye.

Sunlight filtered down through the tree branches overhead, illuminating the trail of clover and witch hazel that stretched behind the young adventurers as they walked. This time they decided to search for wood in the opposite direction they had the day before, going out further than Naoya was sure Anders and Remus would have liked. Secretly, they'd been covering a lot of ground on these little firewood forays.

"So we're looking for people who start fires because they're going to help us?" Mabel incredulously questioned, running her fingers through her long brown hair in place of a comb.

"That's what we're hoping for," Naoya replied, his hands in his pockets. He had decided that unlike the older two humans, wasn't going to hide things about their situation from her - albeit he kept out the bloody parts. "The man we ran away from didn't like them, and we're guessing they don't like him enough to want to at least hear us out."

"But you said that Al-guy was left in charge. The balverine king," Mabel was still trying to understand the story, but she was catching on fast. Her face scrunched slightly. "Was Al handsome? One time my friends and I got ahold of one of their mom's werewolf adult romance novels, and all I can picture is the main character from that."

"If he was human, I would guess he was about thirty. He was really, really tall, thin, and his hair was snow white and he had gold eyes. Even when he wasn't in his human form. Usually wore these black leather gloves, I think he doesn't like touching things." The psychic shrugged. "And he wasn't really my type. I prefer guys my own age with dark hair."

Mabel smiled. "Dark-haired boys, huh."

"And girls," Naoya casually added. "But mostly boys."

Mabel nodded. "Like you?"

"Some were normal humans, one was a mage, and the one guy I liked the most is part demon," he gave her a little wink. "His name's Kaname. He's my best friend, so don't tell him. Or his girlfriend."

"Naoya, that's just scandalous," Mabel giggled, waving a hand in an exaggerated dismissive manner. "Let's see. I dated a mermaid - or is it merman?" Mabel started on her own list. "Merboy, a human, and a couple vampires. Oh! And a whole boyband!"

Naoya arched his brows, nodding respectfully. "Not bad for a thirteen year old. I prefer boys' basketball teams over boybands, though."

"Dipper would tell me that's too many boys," she sighed. Mabel began "combing" her hair again.

"You have every right to date who you'd like. But I can see his point, too. Brothers have to make sure their sisters are dating guys who will respect them, us twin brothers especially," Naoya offered her, smiling gently. He then sighed, looking back ahead. "Haruna can date who she'd like. Not like I'd have much say in it. But…" he felt his chest tighten, the words sticking like rust on his normally silver tongue.

"But…?"

"She was sick in the hospital for a long, long time." It was the best way he could think to explain it. It was far easier than explaining a genetic disease that required his sister to be put into a coma, else she would be at risk of her abilities destroying her own mind and the minds of others. "I would want her to take it easy, for her own sake."

Mabel watched him, her fingers still working her long hair. She stayed quiet as she worked out what Naoya was saying, and the two of them ceased exchanging words for what seemed like forever. Finally, Mabel asked: "But what if we can't find the firestarters? What if they don't want to help us? What do we do then? Will we get to go home?"

Naoya shrugged. "Right now, we'll keep searching for them and we'll go from there." He stopped upon picking out an oddly shaped grouping of branches in the trees up ahead, a large old broadleaf tree with a trunk as wide as a small car and the branches on one side were pulled down in a seemingly unnatural manner - as if someone was building a roof of leaves next to the trunk. "Mabel, you know woods and trees and stuff better than I do, what's that look like?" Naoya pointed at it.

She stopped and squinted at it. "Kinda looks like somebody pulled a bunch of branches down into a little hut. Let's go check it out!" Before Naoya could utter any note of caution, she had charged out ahead of him.

Mabel ran around the wide trunk of the tree, and Naoya followed after her - opting to duck underneath the great low-laying branches. A short snap is all that Naoya heard before the branches overhead parted, the world suddenly turning upside down as he was yanked up into the air by his right leg. The psychic screamed and reflexively covered his head, banging his elbows on nearby branches and the tree itself as he waited for the recoil bouncing to stop.

"Naoya!" Mabel shouted up at him. She ran back to where she had last seen the psychic, before finally looking up to spot him. "Naoya, are you okay?!"

"Owwww," Naoya groaned. He shook himself free of of the shock, and looked down - or was it up? - at his right foot, where a thick rope had snared around his ankle, and the only thing that had protected his skin from being cut by the line was the looseness of his black jeans. Maybe there was a usefulness to not being able to afford fitted clothes, Naoya mentally concluded. He licked his pouty lips and held back the torrent of swears he wanted to spew - there was no denying that his entire right leg was in far more pain than the rest of him. "I'm mostly okay, going to be a little bruised, though," he finally replied to her, turning his attention back to Mabel. "Stepped in a trap. I don't think I can get down by myself."

"I can climb up there and untie you," Mabel said, starting for the lowest branch she could find.

"No!" Naoya shouted, then winced as he realized that he was in far more pain than he thought. He strained to give her an apologetic smile. "Go get Remus and Anders. I think my ankle's sprained and one of them might be able to do something about it. Maybe."

Mabel gave him a stubborn look before she grabbed a long, thick stick and started to climb the tree anyways. Stick in hand, she climbed as high as Naoya and after situating herself in a stable place, she placed the stick across two branches just underneath Naoya. "You can put your hands on this to keep the weight off your ankle," she told him. "Like a doing handstand, except you're really high up in a tree for some reason and you're flashing the whole world your bellybutton."

"Very smart," Naoya agreed, steadying himself.

"I'll be back before you know it!" she promised him, carefully climbing down.

"… Mabel?"

"Yeah?"

"Make sure you go back exactly the way we came, okay?"

"Here!" Anders' voice was shrill and urgent, but not panicked. "I've got something over here!"

"I'm coming!"

Huffing, Remus trudged his way back through the tall grass and past the rear of the windmill. From the back, he could see a round porthole-style window in what must have been the bedroom on the second floor. He could barely see the mage through the branches, spotting just a shimmer of his grey-blue robes as he moved several hundred feet away. It took him another few minutes just to get that far through the undergrowth. Finally he reached the man, stepping over a large tree trunk twice his girth. Remus had been unable to see it before he rose above the trunk, but Anders was standing in the center of a symmetrical depression, perhaps four feet deep and three times as wide and across.

"What is that?"

"A cellar hole," Anders replied, bending over and holding himself up on his knees. His breath was ragged.

Remus waited until Anders righted himself and the red surrounding his cheeks had faded. "I found a rock wall," he said, "though it looks as old as this cellar. Perhaps the windmill is older than we realize?"

Anders shook his head. "No, it's—ah, you need to see. You need to see this." He indicated that Remus should follow.

Leaves crunched violently under their shoes as they headed further into the woods. Out here, the farther away they were from the windmill the thinner the vines became. Like a bruise, the angry thorns and strangling vines grew less apparent over time. The proper color was returning to the forest. Remus didn't have to guess what he might expect when they started to thicken up again. The building reminded him of the first cabin they stayed in, though not nearly as dilapidated. It bore the same white exterior as the windmill, though the condition was much worse, likely due to weather. Or, perhaps, the gaping hole in the roof where a tree had fallen in. Anders pointed as they approached, and Remus looked beyond his fingers to spot a pair of windows with all of the glass blown out.

"I saw it when I tried looking through the window," Anders explained, brushing several hitchhiker seeds off the legs of his pants and the bottom of his robes. He lead Remus to the first of the windows, indicating somewhere deep in the darkness.

"I don't see anything," Remus said, wrapping his fingers around the panes carefully, to avoid broken glass. His head was nearly through to the other side, and the smell of mold was rank. "It's too dark."

"Just there," Anders said from behind. "On the far side and to the left. Look closely!"

Remus did, squinting and willing something to appear. When still he saw nothing, he slid his wand through the gap. "Lumos!"

There, laying half strewn across the dirty wooden floor, were bones. Piles of bones, some crushed and others marred by obvious chew marks. The inside of this house was much the same as the windmill, in that the furniture was intact albeit bloodstained and there were belongings still riddling the abandoned shelves. But beside the table to the kitchen, a human skull with spiderwebs inlaid in the eye sockets lay beside it's own jaw. Deep claw marks ran diagonally across what was once someone's face.

"Balverines," Remus muttered, and Anders made a stiff noise of agreement.

"I think that explains why our windmill was abandoned," he said. "It appears that they were the lucky ones."

Remus nodded. "That doesn't explain the woods, though. They are much too thick for this building to be recent."

With some quick spellwork, Remus had removed most of the window and hopped inside the structure. The door had been barricaded from the inside with several bookshelves and a large piano, and another, smaller body lay strewn below the pile. There was a dreadful hole in the ceiling where a single branch protruded from the floor above, forcing Remus to duck as he approached the larger bones, careful to watch both his head and his footing. Merlin forgive him for stepping on and crushing a piece of a finger, or worse.

"These bones have been here for a while," Remus said, bending down to examine them. "They're not someone who died recently, anyway."

"How can you tell?" Anders asked.

Remus shrugged. "It's hard. But there are no insects here, and there is quite a layer of dust." He turned, glancing across the room again on his way out and frowning at all the claw marks he could see across the floor from this angle. Whoever these people were, they died violently. He rejoined Anders outside.

"This isn't the only one, Remus," Anders said. "They are mixed in with the cellar holes. I would guess that this used to be a large village at some point. Some point very recently."

"Then how do we explain all of this?"

The wind howling through the trees was the only answer, though the feeling of eyes followed them all the way back to the camp.

"I don't like this," Anders murmured, coming to rest against the steps under the door to the windmill.

"Trust your intuition," Remus said. "You said the same thing back at the mansion."

Anders only sighed, rolling his shoulders. "That's because it always leads me into terrible places."

A scream brought their joint attention across the yard just then, a pink sweater bursting into view. Mabel rushed into view, her eyes wide and her hair full of twigs and leaves. Her face had been scratched by a few small thorns, but if she felt pain she didn't indicate it. Rather, she bee-lined for the pair of men, stopping just in time to avoid knocking them off their feet.

"The—Naoya—" she gasped, panting heavily and holding herself as she struggled to breathe. "The trees—"

"Naoya," Anders demanded, kneeling down to her. "Is he alright? Mabel, what's happened?"

Mabel only shook her head furiously, continuing to pant. "A tree—he—"

Remus took Mabel's shoulders in his hands, mimicking slow breathing quite visibly and indicating he should follow suit. "There's a good girl," he said, forcing patience into his tone. "Breathe a bit. That's it."

It was clear that Mabel's expression was urgency, and not fear, as she finally spoke: "A TREE ATE NAOYA!" She panted, looking between the two of them. "We have to go and rescue him!"

Anders blinked. "Eaten by a tree?" Perhaps they ought to find more of these trees, perhaps plant a few more…

"A hunting trap," Mabel breathed. "He's upside down, and I think he's hurt. We have to-hurry! Let's go!" She tugged at both of their sleeves.

"Let's go," Anders said, taking Mabel's hand.

"It's this way!" Mabel lead the way with a confidence she hadn't shown before, leaving the two men trailing behind her rather impressed. Regardless of the plant trail showing the correct path, it was clear that Mabel was not about to lead them astray for a single wanton desire. "Careful," she urged, "there might be other traps in the woods."

Anders' belt and various metal clasps clinked as he half jogged to Mabel's side at the words. "More traps?"

"Yeah," Mabel nodded as she walked, ignoring the leaves stuck in her headband in favor of arriving as quickly as possible. "Where there's one, there's always more, right?"

"Clever girl," Remus replied, using his wand to cut away more of the harsh overgrowth that hung overhead. "We should at least keep on the alert."

Anders pursed his lips in unfortunate agreement. "How much farther?"

"Just up here," Mabel said, coming to a half run and disappearing into the brush.

The two men struggled to keep up and weave through the forest at the same time. Dual paths of witch hazel and clover marked the path, merging flawlessly with the moss and wolfsbane to form a colorful road of sorts through the otherwise unremarkable floor. But as they rounded the corner around a twelve-trunked tree, they collided with one another: Mabel stood in a gap between the trees, staring out into a small open patch fixed in a beam of warm sunlight. Her eyes were wide, and her arms were tucked inside her sleeves which rested against her face as she pressed her hands to her mouth.

"Mabel?" Remus stepped around Anders and strode to her, kneeling and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Mabel, what is it?"

A single arm pointed to something in front of her, and Remus turned. A large tree centered the scene, a long cable dangling from one of the thick limbs. The end of it swayed with the wind, having been severed by something sharp. There was no sign of Naoya. But Remus felt his insides run cold as he saw something below the broken trap: rosemary and amaranth blossoms, in two distinct circular formations directly below the wire. Unlike anything else in the forest, their proud, vibrant color nearly stung their eyes against the green and browns of the woods. And from the center of the circle, there was a fresh patch of clover that wandered away into the woods beyond their line of sight-alone.

Anders cursed, rushing forward into the circle and adding moss to the design. "This is where you saw him last, Mabel?"

Mabel nodded, her small "uh-huh" shrill and frightened. "What happened to Naoya? Where is he?"

"We'll find him," Remus assured her, giving her shoulders a small squeeze. "Don't worry-all we need to do is follow the trail!"

"It goes this way," Anders said, already halfway down the path. "Hurry!"

For a moment, all Remus could hear was the sound of his heart and the thud that pervaded through his body as his legs pounded against the ground, their chase becoming more desperate by the minute. It was not hard to keep his face neutral for Mabel's sake, but Remus could sense that something was amiss. If Naoya got free on his own, why would he not immediately return to the windmill? And the rosemary, the amaranth-that was not there by accident. But the clover lead away alone, and the other plants were nowhere to be found. There was something important, something they were missing. And it was imperative that they discover whatever it was.

But in the next moment, an overwhelming silence broke like a vacuum had sucked the air from their lungs. The clover trail stopped. In the middle of the path, as though Naoya had been vaporized or flung skywards, the clover trail abruptly went cold.

Anders' neck clicked painfully as his head jerked upwards, desperate to examine every single tree limb and every single vine for a single sprout of clover. Anything-anything that might indicate where Naoya had gone. "Naoya!" he called, his Adam's apple working hard against the skin on his throat. "Naoya!"

Remus stood hauntingly still, his eyes working the scene just as desperately, just as fast as his thoughts. "He isn't here," he replied, earning a whirling glare from Anders.

"People don't just disappear, Remus!" he snapped. "Naoya!"

Mabel joined in, cupping her hands over her lips to amplify her voice. "Naoya!"

Remus' wand worked delicate patterns through the air. "Homenum Revelio!" he tried, turning in all directions. And then again. And, again. "Aparecium! Finite Incantatem!"

But there was nothing. Or, rather, no one. The trail had gone cold. Naoya was gone.