Chapter Text
Sophie held the side of her head, trying to make her mind focus on the Neverseen across from her. She glanced to the right, as a chill ran through her veins. Dex’s tunic was rapidly turning red, his face pale and clammy. Biana was beside him, attempting to stop the bleeding and ignoring the deep, dark scars forming across her leg.
At this, Sophie clenched her fists and glared at her enemies in their black cloaks. With the rage boiling inside of her, Sophie took it and strained against her brain to inflict on Lady Gisela across the clearing from her, only succeeding in her legs giving out with a gasp as her head yelled at her to stop.
“Tired, are we,” Gisela grinned through the haze, appearing creepily similar to her son, “I thought telepaths' minds were supposed to be strong?”
It wasn’t just Sophie that had this pain in her head, it seemed everyone did. Fitz was on the ground the same as her, while she could hear Marella’s flames flicker and fizzle out from the wind, unable to withstand it. Even Tam gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to keep hold of the shadows across his face.
Everyone around her was so dazed and stunned that they didn’t notice the ground shaking and rumbling underneath them until it was too late.
“You’ll never win,” gloated Gisela, still uncannily smiling.
One second she was glaring at Lady Gisela through the pain, the next it was sudden darkness where her arms clawed for solid ground and Sophie’s stomach flipped.
They were falling. Falling into who knows where. A Neverseen hideout, a prison specially made for them, maybe the Dwarf caves.
Or they could just be falling to their deaths.
“Sophie, SOPHIE!” A high-pitched voice shouted through her friend’s screams –Biana, probably– snapping Sophie out of her shock. “Teleport us out!”
But what if that didn’t work? Just like her inflicting and telepathy above ground, just like in the weeks after she had discovered Silveny, which she needed a whole ability reset to fix.
What options did they have? It was either that or die hundreds of feet below down. Sophie gripped her friend’s hands, the few that had overcome their fear reaching out through the dark, empty space and helping her make a circle with everyone. Power surged through her mind as she called for the void and..
Havenfield, Sophie thought with strain.
The image of her home sunk into her mind. She pictured the golden exterior, Verdi the T-Rex and Gildie in the pastures, Sophie even thought of the caves in which she had been kidnapped from, anything to get them out of the pit, in which they were still falling. She found it, tucked in the corners of her mind, harder to get to than usual.
Havenfield felt wrong, the home she had become used to wasn’t the same, too dark and unnatural, but there was no time to think. Teleporting took all her strength, yet Sophie was able to send all of it into her friends as the eight blinked out of the sinkhole with moments to spare before they hit the bottom.
“I thought Havenfield was our agreed safety point?” Biana asked after they fell out of the sky with a loud thunder.
She sat up, surprised her body wasn’t aching to lie down. Biana was right, this wasn’t Havenfield. They were in some suburban wetland or small forest, judging by the trees around them and the clearing a few meters away, nowhere near the dinosaur pastures and Calla’s panakes tree.
“What are you guys wearing?” Fitz pointed out the hoodies and casual human looking clothes that everyone had on.
“You’re wearing the same stuff as us,” Dex countered, half teasing, not like just a few years prior in which he would have glared and muttered something about ‘golden boy.’
“Where the hell are we,” Tam muttered, shutting them up and asking the question everyone had been wondering. The silence meant nobody had an answer.
The group found their way out of the trees, into a park with a few kids playing around, as the sky was turning orange and pink.
“The forbidden cities,” Marella breathed.
“Sophie, you should know where this is, right?” Fitz turned towards her.
“Well, considering it isn’t absolutely freezing despite it being the middle of January, I’d say it’s somewhere in California, either that or one of the southern states like Florida."
“But, you can get us out of here, I’d assume?” Linh asked with concern. It would be dark soon, and they wouldn’t want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere in the forbidden cities, the council could track their registry pendants and arrest them, the human world was forbidden for a reason, “and, wait. I don’t have my home crystal with me, and our registry pendants are gone.”
“We’re stranded,” sighed Tam.
“We have Foster, her whole ability is meant to get us out of situations like this,” Keefe said with a grin at Sophie.
“I.. wouldn’t risk it right now, I could barely get us out back there, it’s not a good time to send ourselves off the nearest cliff, even if it seems our bodies are uninjured,” Sophie replied, referring to Dex showing no signs of being stabbed.
“Wait, yeah, didn’t my mom like, slice you open?” Keefe whispered the last part to Dex with a shudder.
“Just noticed, huh? But yeah, I should be dead from Gisela, yet I feel fine, other than the fogginess in my head.”
“I have that too! And I don’t think I can use my ability,” Marella admitted with fear and concern, “like, back there I could only make a small spark, but now my pyrokinesis is gone, completely.”
At those words the group started to test their abilities. Keefe noted how he couldn’t feel Sophie’s emotions from meters away like he used to, Biana only managed to vanish a few fingers for a few moments at a time, and Tam looked a lot less depressed than normal after his shadows across his face unraveled. Everyone else tried with frustration but couldn’t use any form of their ability consistently.
A quiet buzz came from Keefe’s pocket.
He took out the rectangular metal device, “Is this some sort of imparter?”
“I don’t exactly have my technopathy anymore, but I’ve heard from my dad that it’s basically the human version of one,” Dex explained.
“A phone,” said Sophie. She moved closer to see the reason for the vibration. There was a single text message, from someone named “dad” in all lowercase. It read:
Come home now, Keefe. Principal Leto called.
Sophie was silent for a moment. The clothes, the human looking area, Keefe owning a phone, it seemed obvious. “Are we humans?”