Chapter 107 We Are The Cure
The heavy wooden porch swing swayed gently under the weight of the family, the rusted chains creaking a rhythmic, mournful tune that seemed to echo the hollowness in Leela’s chest. She had buried her face in Caspian’s neck, refusing to look up, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs as she clutched Briar’s tiny hand. Briar clutched her hand back somehow sensing that is what her mother needed.
Elana stood by the railing, her knuckles white as she gripped the wood. She had seen her son angry, and she had seen him worried, but she had never seen him look this haunted, this sick to his stomach over some pictures he had seen in a book.
"What is she talking about, Fennigan?" Elana asked, her voice tight with a mother’s demand for truth. "What was in those books? Where did you even find them?"
Fennigan tightened his arm around Leela, pulling her and the twins closer into his side, shielding them from the world. He looked at his mother, then at Ginny, whose hand was resting protectively on her pregnant belly.
"We found them in the Shadow Wing," Fennigan admitted, his voice rough like gravel grinding together. "The section behind the iron grate. The part of the library that hasn't been opened since the Great War."
Elana’s eyes widened. "That section was sealed. It was supposed to be structural records."
"It was a graveyard, Mom," Fennigan corrected, staring out at the tree line. "We walked past that door for centuries. My father, his father... we all walked past it, thinking the dust meant safety. We forgot about it, just like the world forgot about the Elementals."
He looked down at the top of Leela’s head.
"That is... until she came into our lives," he whispered. "Until an Elemental walked back into this house. The magic in the library woke up, Mom. The locks didn't just open; they practically screamed. The house wanted us to see what we had ignored."
"And what did you see?" Ginny asked, her voice trembling.
Fennigan closed his eyes, the images burning behind his lids.
"It wasn't history. It was a manual," he said, the bile rising in his throat. "Detailed, clinical instructions on how to dismantle a species."
He took a shaky breath, forcing the words out.
"There were diagrams, Elana. Sketches drawn with the kind of precision you use for architecture, but they were mapping pain. They detailed how to extract bone from a living subject. Specifically... children."
Ginny gasped, a sharp, wet sound, and turned away.
"They found that if you torture them—if you push them to the brink of death—their magic flares into the bone marrow to protect the core," Fennigan continued, his voice devoid of emotion now, purely factual to keep from screaming. "And that's when Vane cuts it out."
"He cuts...?" Elana whispered, horror dawning on her face.
"He takes the bone while it's screaming," Fennigan confirmed. "He polishes it. He wears it. He has created a network of these... artifacts. They emit a frequency of pure suffering. It acts like a jammer."
He looked at Elana then, his golden eyes dull.
"That's why the Goddess hasn't struck him down. She can't see him. He is hiding behind a wall made of the tortured remains of our kind. To Her, he just looks like a graveyard of innocent souls."
Leela let out a whimper against Caspian’s shoulder, the vibration traveling through Fennigan’s chest.
"And the preservation," Fennigan added, the memory of the last book making him nauseous. "There were pages on blood stability. They were trying to figure out if they could bottle the magic, keep it shelf-stable like wine."
He gestured vaguely with his free hand, shaping the air into a terrible box.
"They had babies in cages," he said, his voice cracking. "Rows of them. Stacked like inventory in a warehouse. They didn't look like children in the drawings; they looked like lab rats. They had feeding tubes. They had monitors hooked into their spines. They drained them, Mom. They drained them dry just to see how long the spark would last in a vial before it went cold."
The silence on the porch was absolute. The wind rustled the leaves, sounding too loud against the sudden stillness of the family.
Elana stared at her son, her eyes wide and dark. The political maneuvering, the Lex Terrae, the High Council—it all fell away. This wasn't politics. This wasn't a territory dispute.
"He isn't a wolf," Elana whispered, her voice shaking with a terrifying, cold rage that matched the winter air. "He is a disease."
Fennigan looked down at Caspian and Briar, who were now looking back and forth between the adults, sensing the horror even if they couldn't understand the words. He kissed Leela's hair, pulling her tighter."Yes," Fennigan agreed. "And we are the cure."