Page 2 of The Unseelie War
Furrowing her brow, she turned her attention away from the city. “Okay?”
He flexed his fingers then formed a fist before straightening them again. “I can feel the sunlight on my skin. Do you not understand? I am no longer defined simply by dreams and nightmares. I am…once more real.” He smiled, and there was something almost boyish about it. “I find myself experiencing, for the first time in, perhaps, centuries…something akin to joy. Or, perhaps, it is just because watching you destroy the established order of all reality by accident is deeply,deeplysatisfying.”
“Serrik.” Ava pushed herself to her feet, swaying slightly as the world seemed to tilt around her. The power inside her was still there,still humming beneath her skin like electricity, but it felt…different. Bigger. Less contained. Like it was standing there right beside her like a roaring fire. Or more like when Book was at her side or?—
Reaching for the satchel at her side, she frowned. Book was gone, but that made sense, she supposed. It was a creation of Serrik’s, and it had served its purpose. She was almost going to miss the ever-present thing.
But now wasn’t the time to focus on that. She had bigger problems to deal with. Like three smashed together realities and two fae demigods with perhaps mixed designs on said realities. One of whom she wasn’t sure she knew what to do with. “People are going to die. Are probablyalreadydying. Because of what I did.”
“Oh, most definitely.” His expression sobered. “The question merely remains: What do you intend to do about it?”
Before she could answer, the air shimmered like heat waves, and Puck materialized before them. His silver hair was disheveled, his usual manic grin replaced by something that might have been genuine concern. He clutched a modern tablet against his chest.
“Well, if you haven’t gone and done it.” Puck huffed a half-laugh. “If it isn’t the architect of the apocalypse and her spooky spoody new frenemy-to-bestemies-to-bestemies-with-benefits. How’s it feel to be the person who butt-fucked three planets like achamp?”He held up the screen to her with both hands like a toddler would hold up his favorite drawing, and with just as much pride as the toddler would.
“What?” Ava stared at him dumbly. On the tablet she could see what looked like a news broadcast, though the image kept flickering between different channels in all different languages, captioned in English.
“—reports of impossible creatures roaming the streets of Tokyo?—”
“—floating buildings have appeared over downtown Los Angeles?—”
“—silver threads in the sky that some witnesses claim are singing?—”
“—evacuation orders for anyone within fifty miles of what authorities are calling ‘distortion zones’—”
“—sleepwalking masses unable to be woken up, oblivious to the disasters?—”
Puck swiped the screen, revealing new horrors. A suburban neighborhood where every house had transformed into something from the darkest fairy tales—the original ones, the ones that devoured children and delighted in suffering.
A highway where cars drove through clouds, their passengers screaming as they found themselves suddenly airborne. A shopping mall where massive trees had erupted through the floor, their branches heavy with fruit containing tiny, swirling galaxies.
“Half the world seems to understand that something catastrophic has occurred,” Puck continued. “The other half appears to believe this is all perfectly normal, like they’re just dreaming—they're going about their daily routines as if reality-breaking chaos is simply part of life now. But this is only what's being reported. The real devastation is happening in places where cameras can't reach. The entire city of Prague is now floating two thousand feet above the Sahara Desert.”
Ava felt nauseous. “Turn it off.”
“There's more,” Puck said grimly. “Humans are attempting to coordinate a response, but every time they use their communication networks, the signals get tangled in Web threads and emerge ashaikus. Very eloquent poetry about the end of the world, sure, but freakin’haikus,lady. What’ve you done?”
Despite everything, despite the magnitude of the disaster she'd caused, Ava felt a hysterical laugh bubble up in her throat. It was that or she was going to scream. Or cry. “This is insane. I didn’t mean…”
“Yes. Well.” Serrik seemed displeased about the arrival of Puck. He was staring at the smaller, silver-haired fae as though he had just smelled a particularly bad odor. “It has been done, regardless of what you might have intended. So, I will repeat my question before this…thing appeared. What do you intend to do about the damage you’ve caused, Ava?”
“I don't know!” The words burst out of her, carrying more force than she'd intended. The ground around her feet cracked, spider-web patterns spreading outward through the earth, and she watched in horrified fascination as tiny, jagged flowers began growing from the fissures. Not normal flowers—these had petals that looked like they were made of razor-sharp obsidian glass. She remembered something she’d learned in one of her classes about obsidian being sharper than steel. “Oooh—ooohfuck. Oh fuck?—”
“Deep breaths.Deeeeepbreaths.” Puck stepped carefully away from the dangerous blooms. "Panic only make things worse.”
“I don't know how to fix this.” Tears stung her eyes. “I don't even know if I can. I don’t really know how tocontrolthis.”
“Well…Not sure if this makes you feel any better, but you’re not the only one.” Puck flicked through his tablet again, showing her more clips.
A child in Detroit whose tears were manifesting as storm clouds. A woman in Berlin whose anger had created shadow creatures that were terrorizing her neighborhood. College students who had accidentally transformed their dormitory into a sentient creature that was now attempting to walk while demanding coffee.
“The barriers between consciousness and the Web have been completely shattered, and the Web can turns dreams into reality,sooooo…” Puck continued, his tone shifting from playful to something approaching serious and back again with no warning. “The Web transforms thoughts into reality, so every stray idea with sufficient emotional weight behind it is manifesting physically. This merged world has become a collaborative nightmare, and most of the participants don't even realize they're contributing to it.”
As if to punctuate his words, a flock of origami birds suddenly burst from the grass near Ava's feet, their paper wings somehow carrying them aloft as they wheeled overhead in a perfect formation before settling in the branches of the nearest oak tree. The tree,apparently deciding it liked them, immediately began sprouting paper leaves to match.
Everyone stared.
“Did you do that?” Serrik asked her quietly.
