I am so bad at updating. My excuse was NaNoWriMo in November, but then I neglected to update in December. Hope this makes up for it?

1/12/2019

Sophie froze, and she could swore that her entire heart stopped for a split second, and she backed into Keefe's chest, feeling the need to steady herself in the only thing she had: Keefe.

Tam and Linh rose up out of the house and onto the flat roof.

They needed to get out of here.

But Sophie couldn't move, even when Keefe shoved her behind him. "Thoughts..." He murmured under his breath.

She slipped into his mind.

Teleport. Don't wait for me. I'll hold them off for you.

You're an idiot.

Yes, I am. I'm such an idiot. But I'm not letting you turn into some zombie thing.

Biana had flickered back into sight, creeping closer to Keefe, twirling a strand of her hair with a flirtatious glance at Keefe.

"What the refrigerator..." Sophie trailed off.

"Hey Keefe," Biana's voice was her normal voice, and Sophie's heart picked up, hoping, just hoping, that Biana wasn't under the spell. "Don't you want to try this elixir?" She winked.

Of course the Elixir Biana was a flirty one.

Sophie felt her face contort into a sneer, and luckily she saw Keefe was torn between rolling his eyes and having an especially confused facial expression. His thoughts were a flurry of cuss words.

She wasn't scared of her friends.

She was scared of what would happen to them.

"I'll pass."

"That's too bad." Dex added, climbing up and out of the house.

Look, I know they're under an elixir, but Dex should still be jealous that his girlfriend was hardcore flirting.

Sophie scowled at the reminder.

It's okay, only your charms work on me. He turned to wink at her.

She rolled her eyes.

"We got other people to try it." Fitz said with a smile.

She wanted to smile back.

She didn't.

"Yeah." Grady and Edaline came out from behind Della and Alden.

He squeezed her hand.

Yeah, she wasn't moving.

But she found herself moving closer to Grady and Edaline, as if they were coaxing her towards them.

It felt mesmerizing.

She felt Keefe's hand gently pulling her back. She ran to her parents instead.

She saw the elixir.

She saw it about to pour over her.

She saw a tuft of familiar blond hair.

And she saw the elixir stain Keefe's hands instead of hers.

"That was easy." Edaline commented. Sophie could move again.

And Keefe turned around to look at her as she backed away.

And his ice blue eyes were filled with a burning fear.

She entered his mind.

You're not-

Nope.

What the-

Yeah.

I know.

But if I touch you-

Sophie grabbed the back of his shirt and ran off the building, dragging an elixir covered Keefe with her.
She teleported, never letting go of Keefe.

...

"Why are we here?" Keefe asked, his arms still covered with the elixir.

"Calla can heal anything," Sophie said. "So we need some of the Panakes flowers."

Keefe grabbed her hand.

She felt the sticky-

He dropped it.

"Oh god. I've ruined everything just because- ARGH!" Keefe was pacing back and forth, his hands over his eyes as if he didn't want to see her, and yet he was still peeking through his fingers.

A dizzy rush ran through her body but she fought against it as hard as she could, forcing the upcoming waves away.

It stopped.

And she was fine.

"Keefe... This is weird."
He turned around. "THANK GOODNESS-"

Sophie face palmed. "Go into Havenfield and fix... That." She motioned to the elixir on his shirt.
He sighed and followed her instructions, muttering complaints.

She was alone with her thoughts.

And all of them were focusing on only one topic: they were immune.

They were immune.

And she had to figure out two things: why, and what the heck the antidote was.

She was glad that her tunic had pockets. The petals crumpled a little when she had put them in, but what else could she do?

Immune.

How were they immune?

Somebody approached her from behind, and she turned around.

"Hi Flori," Sophie said.

"Hello Sophie. Grady and Edaline left in a rush. What happened?"

"Well... That's kind of a long story." Sophie told her what had happened in a condensed version.

"I don't think Panakes will help. Is that the elixir?" Flori motioned to the small dot of elixir that still resided on her palm.

She nodded. "Yeah."

Flori touched the elixir before Sophie could stop her. "Hmm... I don't feel anything."

"It must not affect gnomes."

"And it doesn't affect you either."

"I guess." Sophie looked away.

"I have an Imparter too. If you need me, you can hail me anytime." Flori waved goodbye as Keefe began walking towards them, having come out if Havenfield.

At the mention of her Imparter, Sophie pulled hers out of her pocket. "Hail Sir Tiergan."

Keefe peered over her shoulder at her Imparter.

"They've gone insane." Tiergan said.

"Hello to you too." Keefe responded. Sophie smacked him with the back of her hand.

"The elixir appeared in Everglen. Did it get that far?" Sophie asked.

"Sophie, it's been appearing everywhere. There's a complete outbreak, and nobody knows how in the world it came to be. The Black Swan have been trying to figure out why this had been happening, and what the antidote is."

"How have the Neverseen done this?" Keefe asked.

"How do you know it's the Neverseen?" Tiergan pressed for details.

"We got a note next to a vile of elixir that appeared in a room at Everglen. We have a feeling that someone conjured it there. It had a symbol of the Neverseen on it, but no other writing was visible." Keefe explained.

He paused to think. "We need to find the antidote, and quickly. And prevent it from spreading. But I just got word that Councillor Alina has contracted the elixir as well."

"Serves her right." Keefe laughed. Sophie rolled her eyes, even though she clandestinely agreed.

"But that means that it spread really... quickly."

"It did." Tiergan said in a sort of "Duh" voice. "Look, you need to get somewhere safe. Without crazy people there."

"And just how-"

"Instructions to get here will be appearing at Calla's Tree in a minute or two."

"YOU ALREADY PREPARED THEM?!" Sophie screamed at the empty, black screen.

A scroll appeared.

She sighed. Because puzzles were so fun.

She lifted the scroll up, wondering why it felt heavy, and unrolled it.

A bright green viscous liquid was splashed onto the paper.

But there was small lettering in the corner of the page written in the Black Swan's cipher.

Thumbs for Panakes
Limbs for pinks
Characters

"I hate the Black Swan." She muttered.

"What does that say?" Keefe asked.

She recited it to him.

"Well, we have two thumbs and four limbs. And there are six dots on the paper. Pinks could mean pinkie finger, which you said humans use that term, so four fingerprints, and two Panakes petals." He suggested.

Sophie gaped at him. Maybe she'd underestimated Keefe, but that was ingenious.

"What? I can be smart too," He smiled and poked her in the ribs. She swatted his hands away. "What about the character part though?"

"Well, in English, you go left to right, and downwards from there in their characters," She blinked, picking two petals from the tree. "So..." She pressed her pinkie finger onto one of the dots that was in the middle row, and did the same with her other finger. She pressed the Panakes flowers onto the top row of dots.

Keefe copied her.

"What do we do now?" Sophie asked. Keefe was busy staring at the paper.

"That," he pointed at the corner, now filled with more runes.

Squares
Back
Faded
Écrire
Differences

She told him what it said. "Écrire means 'to write' in French, which is a human language."

"But then what does the rest of it mean?"

She looked over the words searching for a pattern. Something in her mind snapped.

"Difference of Squares." She told him.

"Huh?"

"It's a really easy math formula. People use it in mental math sometimes. a squared - b squared = (a + b)(a - b). The words make like a rainbow thing. Differences is connected to Squares, and Écrire is connected to Back. We have to write that formula on the back. What about faded?"

Keefe turned the paper around so they could see the back. "We have to write it in the faded areas." He highlighted them with his finger.

"Do you have a pencil?"

"Umm..." Keefe dug into his coat pocket. "Yup." He handed her a pen.

She steadied the paper against Calla's Tree so she could write on it. The next thing she knew, she was grabbing Keefe's hand as she felt herself disappear.

...

"Owwwww." Keefe winced.

That leap or teleport or whatever it was had dropped them down from 10 feet in the air for a very "comfy" landing called concrete.

Which was how she had ended up with a sore back to Keefe's chest and a grumpy Keefe.

She rolled off of him, slowly sitting up and looking up at her surroundings.

They had landed on pavement, near patches of red grass. Her first thought was, WHY COULDN'T THEY HAVE LANDED IN THE GRASS?!

Her second thought was, Now THAT'S a hideout. Aka, a huge mansion. But it was underground, with a large ceiling hovering over the top of the roof, hollowed out.

And it was sort of French countryside style.
Preeeeeettttyyyyyy.

Mr. Forkle strolled through the doors. "You kids, always late. Get up. We're going to get that antidote."