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"I am going to die out here." Stiles moaned, tripping over what felt like the hundredth invisible rock he had encountered since he began this little adventure. "Ouch, fuck," he caught himself on a not particularly soft tree. "I'm not even kidding anymore. The sun is literally about to go down and I am lost in the woods with a dead phone and no idea where the road is. Or north. The sun sets in the west right?" He spun around in a panicked circle, looking for the sun only to remember two seconds too late that looking directly into the sun was a terrible idea. "Fuck!" he fumbled at his backpack, blindly pawing about inside the big pocket as he blinked spots from his vision.
"Give it to me straight," he said, sighing in relief as he felt that familiar, smooth surface under his fingers. "Am I going to die out here?" he asked, careful not to drop it as he removed his hands from the bag with his prize.
// Ask again later //
"You suck. Like so bad," Stiles groaned, then swore as something rustled in the bushes up ahead. "What does that even mean? You don't know if I'm going to die? Ugh."
He glared at the Magic 8 Ball in his hands. "I swear it had better not mean I won’t die in this specific spot and you are luring me out to some other place to die. Are you sure I need to be out here tonight?"
// It is decidedly so //
Stiles sighed again at the little blue dice floating in the viewing window. "If I get eaten by a bear you'll spend the rest of eternity out here in the dirt and deer shit. I hope you realize that."
// Very doubtful //
He gave the ball a spiteful shake, but continued on.
Stiles was fully aware of what this would look like to people if anyone but himself was even out in the middle of these woods in the middle of the night. Which they weren't, because that would be weird. Or crazy.
The jury was still out on the crazy bit, but Stiles was for sure, an established weirdo. A shining pillar of the oddball community as it were. At least he wasn’t that college student who dressed up like spider-man and climbed shit around town in his off hours. No, he was that high school kid who claimed to be clairvoyant and talked to his Magic 8 Ball like it was a real person.
In his defense he had originally tried to get his hand on a set of tarot cards, but he had been seven at the time, and the only set the bookstore had unfortunately included pictures of women with their tits out, communing with nature or something, and Mrs. Wilson wouldn’t even let him take it off the shelf, much less sell it to him.
So Magic 8 Ball it was, and either the messages being passed along came through a particularly sassy spirit or his own magic enjoyed trolling him. Even his dad, who didn't believe for a second that Stiles had the Sight, or could see the future or whatever, was still impressed by the ball's ability to pick the most absolutely tone deaf or rude answers every time Stiles invoked it.
"I would fudging kill for a magical tool that could answer more than just yes or no questions. Like, sure. I can ask if I will die here, but what if technically I die like a few yards down the path? Or what if I don't die, but am kidnapped by cannibalistic off the grid cultists and am forced to help them lure in other unsuspecting hikers —wait, what's that?" he cut himself off, sniffing the air curiously.
"Dude, is that a campfire? I definitely smell something burning, and I was joking about the cannibals but the chances of murderers—" He stopped as the dice in the ball spun.
//My sources say no//
He frowned, trying to track his word vomit back. "Not a campfire? Ok. Is it cannibals?"
//Very doubtful//
"Ok, but that's not a no. Is it murderers in general?"
//As I see it yes//
"WHAT," Stiles whisper shouted, spinning around on the spot as a sudden panic that he might have been seen hit him. "What the hell? What do you mean it's actually mur —wait, no. Fuck. Ok. Am I in danger?"
//Reply hazy, try again//
"Do they know where I am?"
//My sources say no//
"Do they know I'm here?"
//My reply is no//
He hesitated, thinking this over. There was really only one reason he could think of that his magic would have sent him out here tonight, with murderers in the forest...
"Fuck," he breathed, feeling a frisson of fear and adrenalin rush through him like a nauseating wave. "Oh my god. Are people going to die tonight if I don't do something?"
//Yes//
Time froze, for a second, or a day —he couldn't say. But it felt like the whole forest went silent, listening, just waiting to see what he would do.
He ran.
Following his nose he ran as fast as he could, as he reasonably could, toward the scent of burning. Now wasn’t the time to panic and twist an ankle. So he focused, step by pounding step he went, trying not to think about how much battery his phone had left or how much trouble he would be in for being out here like this.
He was here for a reason. Someone was going to die unless he acted. He could feel his magic rolling around in his chest, pulling him forward and lending his legs strength.
"Holy shit."
The whole house was on fire.
"I —oh my god. Are there people in there?" He shook the ball with trembling hands, barely able to believe this was really happening. This wasn’t a movie, a house was literally on fire right in front of him.
//Yes definitely//
"Ok, ok. Holy shit.” He scrambled forward, his legs feeling like jelly now that he had reached his destination. He could hear the blaze, cracking and groaning as it ate away at the walls. “Why don't they just climb out?” It didn’t make any sense. The doors were barely touched, the fire seemed to have started toward the back. If there were people inside they should be able to leave, unless the smoke had gotten them…but then he wouldn’t be able to help them and his magic sent him here, to save them. There had to be something he was missing.
“Are they trapped?" His eyes were stinging, and he brought up a sleeve to cover his mouth as the smoke began to make his throat burn and ache.
//Signs point to yes//
Trapped, but how? The roof seemed intact, and he prayed to any gods listening that his magic didn’t expect him to run inside and lift burning beams like some sort of —there. There was something on the ground. He stumbled forward, towards the heat.
A black line ringed the house. With a sinking feeling in his already rolling stomach he knew what was happening. Mountain ash. Someone had put up a barrier. His magic rolled, anger rising up in him at this proof. This really was a murder, a supernatural crime scene.
"Ok, just —just break the line. Break the window. Break the line. Break the window. Get them out and don't get dead. Break the line, break the window —OH FUCK, YES!" He practically choked in relief, and from the smoke irritation, when he saw the shovel leaning against the fence from where someone had attempted to do something with the small garden in the yard. "Come here you beautiful thing. You have no idea how glad I am to —HOLY SHIT!"
Gun!
Lady with a gun! A gun that was pointed away toward the house but the lady, who was definitely all sorts of intense, and was standing with a gun at a murder scene in process!
Stiles ducked behind the fence, thanking his lucky stars that the meager wood was between him and the gun lady, and that she seemed too interested in the burning house to have overheard his frantic rambling just moments before.
He peeked over the edge, and kind of wish he hadn’t.
She was smiling, mouth half open as if she was about to start laughing any moment, eyes shining in the dancing light as she just stood there watching a family burn to death and smiling about it.
A scream rang out from the house, agonized and despairing. Something cracked, broke and fell in under the hungry force of the fire. Stiles felt his feet moving, his fists coming up and backpack raised as he threw himself at the woman.
Surprise was on his side, his as much as hers, and she fell to the ground with barely a confused sort of shout, cut off with a grunt as he slammed his open palm up into her nose, using the weight of his backpack to throw her off balance. She hit the dirt hard, caught completely unaware in her moment of victory.
He felt his magic surge again, and his body moved, foot coming up only to stomp down on her wrist with as much force as he could muster. The gun fell from her hand as she screamed in pain and rage, blood flying from her lips where it had dripped all down her chin. He must have hit her pretty hard because it was with barely a weak scrabble in the dirt, her shockingly skimpy outfit providing no protection against the rocks and sticks that scraped her arms bloody as she fought him, that he managed to wrestle the gun from her.
He raised the gun with a shaking hand, stepping back several paces as she screamed something unintelligible in his direction. Something about monster fucking, something about killing him. His ears were ringing, and everything seemed a little distant, as if each thought and movement came to him through a fog. It was probably shock.
"Fuck.”
His backpack was laying on the ground where he had dropped it in the take down and following tussle. He reached down, never lowering the gun, feeling around until magic or luck put the 8 Ball back in his hand. He clutched it to his chest, the wind in the trees picking up and fanning the flames of the home burning behind them higher. She wasn’t smiling anymore, her blood covered teeth bared at him like she would like to rip his throat out.
“What am I supposed to do now?"
Out of the corner of his eye he could see reds and oranges growing, could imagine the people inside, trapped and dying, could feel the heat reaching out even to this corner of the yard.
He shook the ball.
A bubble floated across the window as the ball deliberated.
Neither said a word as they stared at the ball in his hand, one enraged and dazed possible mass murderer sans gun, and one almost hysterical teenage semi clairvoyant.
The bubble cleared and a strange, red dice surface pressed up against the window. This was new, he had never seen anything but the brand typical blue dice before, no matter how magic he had believed himself to be.
//Kill the bitch//
Stiles didn't hesitate.
When the clip was empty and the woman very much dead, he dropped the gun with trembling hands to the grassy ground. Mind blank, he picked up the shovel again, thinking determinedly blank thoughts about the wet hint of red on the spade end as blood pooled out from the body.
He could hear the ominous crack of wood being consumed in the house as he broke the line. It was sheer luck the whole place hadn’t collapsed yet.
He stepped forward and touched the door. Hot. His eyes scanned the side of the building, stopping on a low window, flush with the curling, browning grass. A basement, but more importantly, there had been movement. Just for a moment, but he was sure. He rushed over, raising the shovel.
"Get back, I'm going to break the glass." He called, not letting himself think anything about how there was no answer. No movement from behind the smoke at his words.
The glass broke on the first strike, but he took a second to drag the point along the jagged edge of the window frame to clear what he could.
He took a deep breath and knelt, reaching his arm down into the dark.
"Take my hand."
He waited, eyes squeezed closed against the burn of the smoke.
1...2...3...
Fingers brushed his own, and then a firm hand took his.
Stiles pulled.