FAMILYR, Chapter 9
What Fear Defends
It’s been hard to find time for writing lately, but I finally finished Chapter 9, and getting to dive back into this world felt incredible. There’s nothing quite like the moment when the words start to move again. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved getting lost in it.
*Content warnings: Violence and physical confrontation, threats of sexual violence (implied, not depicted), injury and blood, panic and fear responses, & mild coarse language
Welcome to FAMILYR (Pronounced Familiar). Previous chapters are linked below if you missed them…
Table of Contents
Chapter 2 - On the Edge of Two Worlds
Chapter 3 - Where the Hearth Divides
Chapter 4 - Through Shimmer’s Eyes
Chapter 5 - The Breaking Point
The pounding in my ears drowned everything else. Branches crashed, breath rasped until only my heartbeat remained, steady and deafening. My boots tore through the undergrowth, each breath sharp as frost, cloak snapping on thorns. The forest blurred past in streaks of gold and fading green. My lungs burned, but I couldn’t stop. Something else had taken the reins, driving me on while my thoughts stumbled to follow.
Then the light shifted. The sun hung lower than it should have, a molten thread sinking between the trunks. I hadn’t seen it fall. One moment it burned dull through the canopy, and then it was gone, as if the forest had swallowed time and skipped ahead without me. The last veins of twilight thinned between the trees.
Pine filled my lungs, sharp, clean; beneath it lingered something bitter and bright. I knew that taste. Magick. I’d felt traces before, faint beneath bark and soil, but now it stirred, thick in the air and thrumming with life. The forest breathed slow and deep, its exhale unfurling in ribbons of blue and green that wove like smoke from the seams of the world.
Heat pulsed through my fingertips. Embers of light coiled from my skin, trembling before they died. I hadn’t summoned it. It escaped before I even knew it was there, drawn out by the forest itself.
A sharp creak split the dark to my left. I flinched but kept running. Another followed, slower, drawn out, wood groaning somewhere behind me. The sounds bled together with my heartbeat until they were nothing but noise.
Then the cry rose through it all, thin, high, and terrified. It cut clean through the blur, and everything in me answered. My legs pushed harder, lungs burning. I was almost upon it now. The laughter that followed was worse: low, rough, and slurred, coming from deeper in the trees, just beyond my reach.
The clearing opened like a wound, bleeding shards of light into bruised stillness. Three men stood in a lopsided ring, rough-faced and ruddy with drink, washed in the low amber of twilight. One of them dangled a tiny creature by the arm, a Mirekin Elf no taller than my hand, his moss-dappled skin streaked with dirt and blood. The tiny creature swung in the drunkard’s grasp, its root-fine hair catching the last scraps of light as it writhed and kicked.
My sprint faltered on slick ground, boots slipping through mud and crushed leaves, before I caught myself. My chest heaved, the world faintly shuddering with the echo of my run. Each breath curled pale in the air, catching the last light before fading into shadow.
I swallowed hard, the edges of my sight still shivering. The men didn’t notice me at first. They laughed as if the forest were deaf, as if pain were cause for revelry.
Something in me broke. Heat surged behind my ribs, the air tightening at the sound of their laughter. What left my throat wasn’t a word but a sound, raw and unshaped, ripped free by fury and striking the clearing like a spark finding tinder.
“Let him go, you blight-born filth!”
The freeze hit first, sharp enough to numb, then turned blistering, heat chasing it through my veins. My magick didn’t leak this time; it forged. Threads of light knit tight over my hands, spiraling around my wrists like living metal. The iridescence deepened, blue into green, then silver, shifting too fast to hold one color. Each flicker bit the dark like a blade’s edge. The air trembled close, tasting of frost and pressure, and the light pulsed once, low and feral, like it was angry for me.
The tallest man turned, slow and uneven, like his limbs were arguing with gravity. He blinked at me, swaying in place, then lazily wiped a smear of something, mud or blood, off his cheek with the back of his hand. “Huh?” he said after a beat too long. The glow caught him, and for a moment his face went slack, emptied of thought. Then he raised a meaty finger, the motion slow and deliberate, as if it took all his focus. “Eh… you talkin’ t’me, girlie?”
“Yes!” The word came out louder than I meant. I stepped forward, shaking with nerves and something fiercer underneath. My whole body felt too small for what burned in it.
“NO!”
The bark tore through the clearing, rough and furious. Grissel stumbled out of the trees, caked in fresh mud and disbelief. His eyes landed on my hands, on the magick, and his whole face fell.
His hooves struck close behind me, heavy and quick. “Veil take it, strombrat,” he barked, shoving past my shoulder. “Douse that spark before something worse sees it!”
“I… I can’t!” The words came out raw. My hands shook, light writhing with my pulse. “They’re hurting it, Grissel, look! It’s alive, it feels, and they’re laughing.” My voice cracked in the cold air, but the sound barely touched them.
The tall drunkard sneered, eyes red-rimmed and lazy, swaying slightly as he gestured at the trembling creature like it was garbage. “Barely. Look at it. S’half-dead already.” A slow, guttural laugh rumbled up his throat, and his companions followed suit, off-key and too loud, like the joke had sloshed backward into them secondhand.
My heartbeat slammed against my ribs, sharp enough to bruise. I wanted to step back, to breathe, but something inside me had already decided otherwise. Heat surged up my throat, trembling on the edge of fury.
“You rotbellied wormspawn!” I spat. My hand moved before I knew it had.
The magick answered, not him, but me, and it hurt.
Light burst backward, violent and wrong, slamming into my chest. The world flashed white, cold, and blinding, then died. I hit the ground hard, breath torn from my lungs, fingers stinging where the glow guttered out. The air stank of singed pine and cold metal.
Grissel staggered, shaking off the flare. “Blighted brilliance,” he muttered, all exasperation, no surprise.
They didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just roared with laughter, loud, slurred, and ugly, like I’d handed them the punchline of the week.
The elf writhed. His kind didn’t fight with fire or claws; their magick whispered in roots, in rain. He wasn’t made for this. He looked at me, wild-eyed, trembling, and worse, hopeful.
New fury seared above the shock. I scrambled up, mud clinging to my palms. My fingers met stone before I knew what I reached for. I hurled it with everything I had.
Thwack.
The stone struck the tall man just above the ear with a wet, snapping crack.
He swayed, blinking dumbly. “Ow… wha’ the—”
For a beat, he just stood there, dabbing at the blood trailing down his cheek, lost in thought, like his brain was wading through molasses. Then his face twisted, first confused, then furious, as if the blow had jostled something loose and sloshed the last of the liquor into all the wrong corners of his brain.
“Soon’s when we’re... urgh... done mashin’ the twig—” he spat, lurchin’ forward, “you... you’re nex’, darlin’. Real... fun-time treat...” He blinked hard, like the fog behind his eyes wouldn’t clear no matter how he squinted.
Grissel’s face darkened as his hoof struck soil, small, but final, a line between us and them. The drunkards loomed tall, all swagger and sway, but he held his ground: short, stubborn as a stump in a flood. For a breath, I forgot the danger. All I could think about was the trouble I’d dragged him into, and how small he looked against them.
The tall man squinted at Grissel, a wheezy chuckle leaking through his teeth.
“Awwhh, don’chu fret, moss-mutt,” he drawled, lip curling. “We’ll save yer turn. Righ’ after the girly. Letcha sit front row an’ hear all th’pretty noises, yeah?”
Something shifted in his eyes, cruelty curdling into hunger. I didn’t understand the look, only that it turned my stomach. Grissel did. His whole frame stiffened.
That was it.
Grissel vanished.
One moment, he was before me, then gone. The earth caved where he’d stood, leaving a shallow dip, a puff of dust hanging in the air with a faint rumble below.
Then, impact.
He exploded from the soil, a cannonball of fury and stone hooves first. They slammed into the man’s face with a sickening crack, like melon struck earth.
Blood burst in a dark spray as the drunkard flew backward, landing fifteen feet away in a moaning, twitching heap.
Dirt rained down, and silence followed.
“Enough!” Grissel bellowed, like a streak of lightning parting the storm.
The other two men blinked, swaying, confused, off-balance. One started to raise a bottle, as if that might help, but then thought better of it.
“You don’ cross a Brownie under oath,” Grissel growled, breath coming hard, eyes ablaze. “’Specially not one this sore. Take what’s left of your friend and get gone before I knock your heads together like kettle drums.”
They froze. One looked down at the elf still clutched in his shaking hands.
“Thish... thish was hish idea,” the short one mumbled, stumbling sideways like his boots were arguing.
“I—I didn’ even touch it,” the other slurred thickly. “’Cept—well—now, but tha’ don’t count. Jus’… jus’ holdin’ the lil’ twig-thing.”
He squinted at the elf like it might bite, lifting it too close to his face. His lips puckered in a cartoonish frown, as if baffled by how it ended up in his hands at all.
He shoved the elf forward with a limp arm. “Here. Take yer... cursèd lil’ stick-man.” Like it offended his senses.
And that’s when we heard it.
A growl, deep, bone-low, and wrong, thrumming up through the roots.
More to come. Until next week… ᛟ
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