"Where are your wings?"
Seer's face dropped. She placed the tip of her pipe in her mouth and took a deep inhale before answering, "I am coming to the end of this cycle. My lovely wings have perished as will I in the next fortnight."
Trip squeaked. "It's the sickness! It is! It is!" He dragged his ears around his head even firmer than before, trying to curl himself up into a ball.
"Stop it, will ye? It ain't be the sickness." Mop gestured violently in Seer's direction. "She be cocooning, ye yellow belly eggy melt!"
"Actually," Seer purred and sighed, "The Opalaught is correct."
"What?" Mop and I cried out at the same time.
Curling up around the tube of her pipe, she let her hands splay out over the mushrooms surface. "The sickness spreads through the Underground once more. None are spared and all will mourn."
"Teeth be taken already," Mop lowered his head in sadness.
"But why?" I asked, not understanding any of this. "What is the sickness? Where does it come from? How do we stop it?"
Seer sucked in and blew out a cloud of smoke, her eyes turning glassy, staring off into the distance. Shadows began to take shape inside the cloud, forming a man with a crown. "More than a thousand years has passed since the High King sat on the Underground throne." The cloud shifted and changed into a large tree. My stomach sank as recognition came to me. The Tree of Life. "With the Tree of Life dead, the Underground can no longer sustain itself."
"So what?" My brows furrowed. "The Underground is feeding off the Fae?"
"Precisely, Miss Liddell." Seer blew another puff of smoke into the cloud, shifting the scene. "One by one the Fae will fall until one takes the mantle or the Tree of Life is reborn." People and creatures fell across the cloud until all was dark.
"How long ye have?" Mop asked, a wavering in his voice.
"The more broken the being the quicker it takes them. I was already in the beginning stages of my next metamorphosis when it took me." Seer sighed lazily. "The Underground is more aware than you realize and will take those it can roll easily. Myself included."
My stomach dropped out my butt. "Hatter."
Her lips quirked up as she nodded her head, her eyes clearing to look at me. "You are much quicker than you used to be."
"What ‘bout Hatter?" Mop's dark eyes bounced between Seer and me.
My head hanging to hide my welling up eyes, I breathed out lowly, "Hatter has not been complete since the Bandersnatch. He would be far more vulnerable than even Trip."
Trip peeked up from his ears, his lower lip pushing out into a pout as he whined.
I pushed my tears back and sucked in a breath. "Fine. What can we do?"
Seer shrugged a shoulder, lazily twisting her hand around. "Leave. Only those who are in the Underground are susceptible to the sickness. I am too far gone, leaving would not do me any good, but you can still escape it."
It was tempting. The self-preservation part of me wanted to do exactly as Seer said. Turning tail and running back to the human realm, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves. Then there was Mercury. I could not leave him behind. Even though he technically put himself in danger without telling me anything and it would serve him right if he ended up getting the sickness because of it.
And yet...I loved him. The very idea of leaving him behind and facing the world alone made me want to curl up into a ball and die.
Damn it to the Reaper and back. Why did I have to be so soft hearted?
"We cannot leave." I placed my fists on my hips and stared firmly at Seer. "What can we do to stop the sickness from spreading?"
"She already told us, lass." Mop twisted his hat in his hands before shoving it back on his head. "We be havin' to find a new High King or bring the Tree of Life back ter life."
I laughed bitterly. "As if those two things are not the most impossible things."
"As is a human who wished to be Fae dooming us all," Seer pointed out with her pipe. "The Underground is full of impossible things. Why should this one be any different?"
With that, she laid her head down on the mushroom and closed her eyes. For a moment, I thought she might be dead but then she began to snore.
"Alright, then." I turned to