It felt strange to be returning home which was strange, really, because it wasn't that long, relatively speaking, since they'd left to rescue the slaves. Somehow, this time felt different. Only part of the change was from knowing that Aiden knew about Sammy, that he had already ingratiated himself so much with the clan that he might as well be a Sullivan himself. Silly as it sounded, letting loose in that pub had been what really made this return feel different. She hadn't relaxed like that, hadn't had fun, in so long... The closest she'd come was in mercilessly teasing her "Baby Cakes" back when she still wasn't sure if Aiden was friend or foe. She kind of missed that, actually, but the closer they'd gotten, the more she'd fretted about lying, and the less she'd been inclined to pull his pigtails. (Which was what the teasing had been, now that she thought about it...)
Anyway, it felt good to be traipsing through the forest. Her feet would disagree after their lengthy trek back and forth, and she was still shouldering the shame of abandoning her son yet again, but at least this time Sammy had known what she was doing. He'd asked her, quiet and just shy of begging, the night before she'd left to "please save my cousins, mommy". And for once, he wasn't crying when he waved her off but cheering for the "heroes" he was so sure would save the day (or their clan-mates, at least).
“Man, I'll be so glad to stick my feet in the lake and eat some of Nana's buns when we get back,” Bree groaned, hopping on one foot a bit to shake out a cramp.
Cain snickered as he scrambled over a fallen tree. “Dude, you've spent too much time with Kiel. You're starting to sound like him.” They looked at one another sideways for a minute, then cracked up laughing. Even Maaike had to smile; Kiel had held up his end of the deal and not even wanted payment in the end, so she could admit to something like respect creeping up on her even if she still thought he talked way, way, way too much. “You're buddies with him, Aiden, right?” Cain twisted to glance at Aiden. “You should ask him to meet us sometime so we can”
Cain gasped and froze on the edge of the clearing. Bree froze up right alongside him, staggering against her still-limping brother and almost knocking them both down. Maaike frowned in confusion, wondering what fresh Hel the clan's kids had wrought in her absence that would shock the siblings so much. Surely, they were accustomed to the things kids got up to when they went largely unchecked? At Sammy's age, Maaike had been into everything and
Oh. Maaike drew sharply to a halt herself, knees weak as she saw the damage. The camp was trashed, tents collapsed on themselves, a few of the skinnier, shorter trees at the edge of the clearing knocked down and smashed up as if something had crashed into or through them. The smoke they'd all assumed was from the campfire billowed up through the gap in the canopy from burned... Maaike couldn't even tell, but the fires had spread beyond the stone ring, blackening holes in whatever tents had remained upright, as if someone had grabbed a flaming torch and lit up whatever they could reach. Not enough damage for a Nereid, but enough to signal a fight.
Someone whined. Maaike's knees almost buckled on the realisation that no one was here. No one was working to put out the fire, no one was righting the damage, no one was tending the wounded because there were no wounded. There were no bodies, either.
“What...?”
Maaike's brain rapidly fired through the possibilities: bandits, raiders, Malaki who'd somehow gotten past the Chandric Barrier, forest monsters that had somehow taken the camp by surprise and overwhelmed the residents... None of them really made sense. There'd be other evidence, bodies, remains of some kind. Not... this.
“Fan out,” Maaike commanded, her voice hoarse and dead. She worried about her mom and Ellery, wondered if the scouts and patrols were caught in this whatever or if they even knew there'd been some sort of attack. Mostly, she felt numb and, conversely, terrified that Sammy had been here when it happened instead of playing in the trees like a monkey. “Look for” She cut off, afraid to even think the word "survivors" in case there weren't. She shook her head and amended, “Just look.”