Page 107 of Found in Obscurity

The glow began to wear off over time, and he seemed to regain more of his wits as the spell settled in, but his gaze was forever turned inward, eyes seeing something none of the rest of them could. Lorin kept an arm around him, fearful he’d fly off without it.

Lorin lost track of the miles they covered in the first day, only stopping for fuel and food that was barely eaten, and then once again at a motel to try and get some rest.

Kit didn’t sleep much, and when he did he tossed and turned, sweating and whimpering, his eyes moving wildly under his eyelids. Lorin stayed up with him, unable to do anything to help except mop his brow and hold him close.

He worried constantly, but he knew Kit wouldn’t want to turn back.

They started again at first light, following Kit’s mumbled directions through roads and forests and towns. Snow came and went, coating everything to make it impossible to tell where they were.

It didn’t matter, they weren’t following any normal signs.

It was on the third day that something changed.

Kit grew agitated, his eyes glowing again as he pointed them toward a sign for Gloomfall. The closer they got, the road signs marking down the kilometers, the antsier Kit became, straining against his seat belt. It was the most animated he had been the whole trip, and Lorin felt it in the air. The taste of it was like ash under the gray sky.

They had finally reached the other end of the rope.

“There,” Kit muttered, then whimpered, confirming the assumption. “It’s there… It’s there…”

He sounded both sure and distressed, his eyes darting around him like he was seeing shadows of monsters. He probably felt like he was. Lorin wished he could take it away, the spell that had linked Kit to his abusers, but it was Kit’s choice.

All Lorin could do was try his best to soothe him, gathering him close into his side and pushing magic to him to try and drown out that connection with their own. Kit no longer needed it, but drawing on his magic as his familiar felt vibrant and wonderful, and he hoped the pushback could do a little of the same.

Kit had to turn his face and nose into Lorin’s neck, huffing loudly, panting breaths skating down his collar. Lorin cradled his skull, stained fingers sliding through the white strands like lines of ink on paper. He wrapped his other arm around Kit’s back, urging his legs over his so they were almost on one seat altogether.

‘Welcome to Gloomfall’ flashed past the window.

“Can we release the spell now?” Lorin asked.

His grandma’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror, sorry but hard. “We have to be sure. We can’t cast that spell again so easily.”

Lorin clenched his jaw, but Kit laid a hand over his on his head. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I can…”

He trailed off like he’d immediately lost his train of thought and Lorin closed his eyes in pain. He ducked his head, pressing his nose into Kit’s exposed ear to nuzzle against him, feeling powerless.

“We’re here,” his grandma said, voice weighted, and Lorin looked up.

They pulled into the small town slowly, each one of them on a knife’s edge. Lorin didn’t need to see his grandma’s foot to know it was a twitch away from flooring it at the slightest hint of trouble.

Things stayed calm on the surface around them though. Their presence hardly made a ripple in the pool as they entered.

The mixture of houses and shops was standard, nothing about the place seeming out of the ordinary. In fact, the place wasentirelyordinary. Almost eerily so. It looked like a human town. People walked by, going about their days. Lorin couldn’t even spot a familiar among them to make him wary. Which made him doubly wary.

“They wouldn’t be so bold as to walk around the streets anyway.”

Lorin unglued his eyes from the windscreen and glanced at his grandma. Her gaze was moving from person to person instead of the road in front of her, which would have been dangerous if she hadn’t been crawling along barely above walking pace. She seemed to be talking out loud to herself.

“Do you think even if they’re humans, they’re in on it?” Lorin asked quietly.

His grandma pursed her lips into a flat line. “It’s not impossible, but it’s far riskier to be so blatant. They’ve stayed hidden this long, which leads me to assume they are heavily secreted somewhere. Using a mostly human town as cover would be far more helpful to them. Bringing the humans they were hiding behind in risks more exposure…but it’s not out of the question.”

Lorin glanced back at the car behind them, Flora behind the wheel. He gave her a firm nod and watched Flora’s eyes harden as she turned to the others to let them know.

This was the place.

Lorin saw something flicker out of the corner of his eye and he turned his gaze that way, only to catch a passing shadow in an alleyway.

It could have been nothing. A mere trick of the light.