Chapter 12

The team automatically started to scan for threats as soon as they landed.

Once happy they were in a small, poorly lit and deserted cavern, Blair whispered, “Which way?”

Jax pointed with her wand, and they spread out with their wands activated to become staves. They quietly followed her down a wide tunnel. She stopped at the entrance and peered into the room beyond. It was better lit than the cavern they had arrived in.

“Invisibility to others,” she whispered at her team.

They nodded back, and each performed the spell that would let the team see them but not anyone else unless they had strong magical abilities. The kids disappeared with Tammy and Eddie.

The team then followed Jax into the cavern. They were all shocked to see ten fine-mesh cages about a metre cubed. They were hanging from the roof on long chains, so the bottom of the cages sat about a metre from the floor.

In each cage was a huddle of small bodies. Jax signalled David and Blair to guard the two doorways while she and the others opened the cages. This disturbed the Nix, and many became awake and frightened, but they didn’t cry out.

“Get them to lick a choccy,” Jax whispered.

The others didn’t argue, and each retrieved a sweet and unwrapped it. They held it out to whoever seemed to be the protector in the cage. The team had to chuckle to themselves, as the sweet was quickly passed around the eight or nine Nix in the cage.

They were not happy to see some were just small children and teenagers and wondered how long these poor people had lived in the cages.

“You will need to attach yourselves to one of us,” Jax whispered to the Nix in the cage she opened. “Once we have you all, we will use magic to leave here, okay?”

She was rather surprised to not get any opposition from the Nix. She went to the next cage and did the same as did the other members of her team. After letting them have a minute to give the medicine a chance of healing them, she soon had Nix covering her body.

David and Blair were amused to see their friends smothered in little flying people. They were hanging off their arms, legs, shoulders and back. They each also had several of the sickest Nix in their arms and hands.

Once they had all of the Nix people, they bunched back up, with David and Blair being the last to join the huddle. Just as Jax did the spell to transport them, one of the guards entered the room. Jax wondered if he saw them or not.

Not that she really cared, as she had what she came for.

The next hour was spent feeding ninety-odd, very hungry and thirsty Nix.

They soon learnt from the oldest ones that their parents had been trapped under the shield. When they complained to Tiqua, she organised a meeting with them. She then spelled them all and put them to sleep. When they awoke, they were in the cages and in the mine.

They had been living in the cages for so long they had produced three generations and were now working on their fourth. They only lived for about twenty-five to thirty years.

The leader, Sallie, wasn’t sure if they could survive out in the wild as their vision had changed, and they doubted they could handle direct sunlight. They had adapted to living in the mine. Jax would have to find a solution for them.

It was going to be another busy day.

“What is this?” Tiqua asked her assistant.

She could feel the spells on the small, wrapped item. However, she had no intention of eating anything she couldn’t identify.

Leigh, her assistant, replied, “Some strangers were handing them out in the marketplace yesterday. Lots of people told me they were medicine to stop the pox from infecting the person or curing it if they had already got it.”

“There were a lot of happy people in the streets this morning. The strangers were also handing out these to the orphans and women,” Leigh informed her boss and showed her one of the ratpacks she had.

She didn’t mention that the other four packs were at her home and that her family would eat well for several days. Tiqua wasn’t well known for overpaying her staff.

To add to Leigh’s woes, her husband had recently been in an accident at the smelter and could not work with his gammy leg. While they weren’t destitute, they weren’t far from it.

The man who handed her the packs said that one pack would feed a person for a day. Leigh had chuckled when she opened the first one and thought the food in it would feed her and her two young children for more than two days.

Jax had designed the packs to feed an active human soldier. She hadn’t thought about the fact that a small Pix woman and two small children or even two adult Pix could easily survive on the same amount of food.

Leigh then told Tiqua that the medicine had an odd effect on her husband. The angry redness and the swelling were gone from his wound when they awoke that morning. He was also feeling much better and was even able to limp to the table.

They both believed he would be fully healed in a couple of days to a week. He was looking forward to getting his job back. It would take a lot of pressure off Leigh once he was working again.

He had been very sick from the infection for several days, and she was worried that he had caught the pox. To see her husband and children smile at her and enjoy a good breakfast had been heartening for her.

She had no idea who the strangers were, but they were more than welcome to come again, as far as she was concerned.

She even let Tiqua keep the ratpack.

Bemused, Tiqua watched her assistant walk out of her office.

She had unwrapped the choccy and popped it into her mouth while distracted. As the taste exploded in her mouth, she found herself enjoying it. She even swallowed before she realised what she had done.