Authors: Rain Oxford
“Rasik can help you,” I said.
The man in question put his hand on Cylo’s shoulder.
“Please describe her. When did you last see her?” the young Guardian asked. The
man was always expressive with his joy, excitement, or shame, but he was
serious in his duty as a Guardian, and now he was completely focused on helping
Cylo.
“I was transporting documents. Normally, my daughter
stays with a friend when I travel long distances, but my friend was ill. We had
been traveling for about six days. We ate dinner and went to bed, just like any
other night. I was woken by a crash. We hit something. I tried to get to her,
but that was the last thing I knew before waking in the goblin dungeon.”
“Why did you not keep her with another friend? You
must have more than the one,” I asked.
“Well… Not that I could leave her with,” he said,
obviously reluctant to explain.
“Surely there are pirates and you would want her
somewhere safe. Why could she not stay with someone else?”
“Is it important?” Cylo asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Because the people of Kahún hate magic. There is a
ban on magic… or was before you came. No one could know that…”
“No one could know that she did magic?” I finished
for him. He nodded. “How could she do magic when there was no energy on this
world?”
“I don’t know. She could always do it, her whole
life. She’s only ten. When she was younger, she would pass out easily from
stress. The doctors said it had something to do with a blood disorder, but
there was nothing they could do about it and they could find no proof. I had to
keep her away from the public because of her ability to do magic, so I used her
fainting as an excuse.”
“So we need to find out what crashed your ship, and
that should lead us to finding your daughter,” Rasik said. “Maybe she
disappeared like you did? That seems to be happening a lot.”
“She would have reappeared when Dylan’s magic healed
the damage… Probably. Maybe she has appeared somewhere else on this world.
Either way, it should be a simple search now.”
Erono was pulling me back to Duran before I could
even finish talking. I closed my eyes as everything started melting together to
avoid extreme nausea. When I felt my feet on the ground once again, I opened my
eyes to find myself standing before my cabin. A quick search of my territory
with my magic showed that there was no Dylan, Mordon, or demon around.
Unfortunately, there was the dead body of Keiske-so
Tae, my nearest neighbor. His charred body was abandoned in front of my cabin,
obviously having been used by the demon hunting Sammy. I returned his body to
his territory and spent the next few hours creating the ceremonial passageway
to the spirit world, which was according to the Shomodii traditions that Tae
followed.
Tae had been seven when I found him wandering the
streets of Anoshii, starving, and took him in as my apprentice in magic. While
his was great at magic, he was an astounding artist. He fell in love with a
neighbor’s daughter before he completed his training. I remember the night that
the sixteen-year-old woke me up crying that he betrayed me with her, and I only
laughed as I told him I didn’t care about the law. It was a stupid law anyway,
so I told him he could still be my apprentice and be with her. The day after he
got his wizard title, he married her. They took a territory bordering mine, had
a couple of kids, and lived happily for the first hundred years or so.
Unfortunately, his wife had no magical skill and couldn’t retain her youth.
When she died, Tae barely hung on to his sanity, but he never remarried and
became a recluse.
I still had some of his paintings hidden away in a
fire-safe box. He could have lived with wealth his entire life if he had sold
his paintings, but he was too afraid. His wife and I were the only ones to ever
know what amazing talent he had. The world just lost one of its very best
artists, and nobody knew it.
But I would move on. I had to. I couldn’t mourn the
loss of my children, friends, or apprentices forever. Everyone around me died…
it was the curse of being a Guardian. Then there was Dylan. My brother was
killed because I didn’t have his back; I wasn’t going to make that mistake
again.
I sighed, reminiscing about when we were first
separated. It took nearly thirty years to learn to travel the worlds… only it
was Ronez who figured it out. My brother appeared one day while I was in the
middle of a brawl. Seeing me under attack, he struck first and asked no
questions later. He had to show me how to travel, so I could visit the world he
was assigned to.
When I returned home, I pulled the card out of my
bag, which I hadn’t shown to Dylan. Something held me back. Once sitting
comfortably on my favorite chair on the porch, I focused my energies and
cleared all thoughts but those of Tiamat. I focused on her voice and the feel
of her magic. Projecting my thoughts over space was the most I could do. Tiamat
was not my god so it would be no surprise if I couldn’t reach her at all.
When I felt no response, I stood and went inside. I
had no way of helping Dylan and no way of contacting any of the gods who would.
It looked like I was going to have to leave it up to Janus and Mordon to help
my nephew. I set the card down and the table and went to get a cup out of the
cabinet. After filling it with water from the pitcher, I heated the nominal
energy until the water boiled, then got a packet of tea out.
I turned to find Divina standing right in front of my
table, looking at the card. I set down my tea as she picked the card up. “I
tried to read my cards and that came up. What does it mean?” I asked.
“It’s an omen. You should not have this,” she said,
looking up at me. “It was meant for Dylan.”
“What kind of omen?”
“A bad one.” She waved her hand in front of her and a
small circle of burning light appeared. She held the card out until sparks
flared out to engulf it. When the circle closed, the card was gone.
“What did you do?”
“Made sure he got it.”
“Did you seal his fate?” I asked, not sure whether or
not to be angry. I knew she loved him and didn’t want to hurt him, but it was
difficult sometimes to think of her as the woman I knew instead of the god she
was and had always kept secret.
Dylan had only known her for a few days before she
faced Vretial; he didn’t realize that she changed. I trusted the Divina I knew,
even when I found out she was a god and had been lying to me since the day we
met… but something happened during her recovery.
“It was not a weapon, but a warning. I can’t know
what it means now because Dylan still has a decision to make. The future is too
uncertain. If he makes one choice, the omen will come to pass. If he makes
another, it will become lost.”
“But why an apple?”
I could see in Dylan’s eyes that he had an idea, and I saw the moment
when he hesitated. The sky lit up with fascinating colors as the energy
clashed. Rojan scented something in the air and drew my fire to keep us warm,
just in time. The sky took on a purple cast and the air grew cold. After
focusing his magic, just when he was about to strike, he doubted himself.
Whatever his plan was, it must have been too dangerous to risk. My friend
didn’t have enough confidence in himself.
He made it to our side safely and had time to put a
defensive shield. That was what he did; protect people. He was a Guardian and
all of his instincts centered on helping and protecting people. Dylan would
never stop, never give up, and never forget those he couldn’t save. It wasn’t
in him to harm anyone.
He closed his eyes and held Sammy close, but even
then he wasn’t done. His power was still stirring around us, drawing on his
desire to protect us. My eyes were open this time, so I saw exactly what Dylan
could do.
The protective shield that Dylan created was strong
enough to be visible. It was an actual shield of cracking and snapping energy,
somewhere between lightning and plasma, but it was also a mixture of green,
blue, and red. What I hadn’t seen before was how the world outside the shield
just broke up into white light.
I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. All around
us was emptiness; the most empty vastness that anyone could ever imagine, where
anything in existence would be destroyed. We were in the void.
Just as quickly as the world had disappeared, it was
rebuilt. For the first few seconds, I thought we were back in the Aradlin
forest, but I quickly realized this was more of a jungle. A dark, cold, creepy
jungle.
“I don’t like this,” Dylan said, letting the shield
fall.
“I agree.” All I could smell was blood and fear, and
it wasn’t from one injured creature. Rojan reacted rather violently to the
smell, causing my eyes, fingers, and teeth to shift. I tried to push him back,
but he was too agitated. I was able to shift my eyes back only.
Get out. Something is coming. Something that
cannot be killed.
I’m not sure if I was acting on instincts or if he
had control, but the next thing I knew, I was pulling Dylan in the direction I
could feel was towards the light. Dylan was clearly startled, but wise enough
not to argue. Trusting me explicitly, Sammy laid his head against my shoulder
and stayed quiet.
The ground was soggy and laden with roots, while
vines and branches hung low from the trees, all of which made it very difficult
to run, but Rojan was pushing me to run faster. We came to clearing, not
actually well lit, but the visibility was a definite improvement. The sky that
could be seen through the trees was dark with rain clouds and possibly a low
sun.
“Stop!” Sammy cried. We did, as even my dragon
listened.
Over the sound of our heavy breathing, we could hear
a small stampede of animals take off… in the opposite direction. Unfortunately,
we could hear they didn’t make it. Several of the alien creatures started to
call out in terror, but none finished their cry. What could kill so many
animals so quickly that they couldn’t even scream first?
It was silent throughout the forest, for as far as I
could hear. My hearing was incredible; there was not a heart beating anywhere
around us.
It has us surrounded.
What does? There is nothing there.
I felt my eyes shift and it was as if the world came
alive… with darkness. Around us I saw there were no living animals, but there
was something so much worse. The ground around the clearing was covered in
darkness that moved and crawled across the muck. It was not alive, but it was
hungry. It was hungry, it was fast, and it could not be killed. I shot a ball
of fire at a patch of it, but it scattered faster than the flames, and then it
converged onto the flames. So much for the dragon fire.
“Mordon, look.” I turned to see that the darkness was
creeping closer. When I shifted my eyes, I saw that it was overcoming the
light, but very slowly. “It can’t stand too much light. Can you make your fire
brighter?”
“I can control the temperature, so I should be able
to make it white-hot.”
“Alright, good. You got this, then. Make it
white-hot. If the shadow thing isn’t burned by the heat, it should at least be
driven off by the light.”
“Yeah, but I would need to actually burn something.
Besides, plasma is brighter.”
“Well, unlike Shiloh, Edward was never a fan of using
plasma, so he didn’t bother to teach me. I know
how
to do it, but I
never practiced it. I never needed it except when I made lightning, which,
until recently, I could only create during storms.”
I stared at him.
He is being overcautious,
Rojan warned me.
He is afraid of what he can do and it will be his downfall.
I could have argued with Dylan and insisted he try,
but Sammy’s safety was at risk. We both had something more important to
protect. “Take Sammy. I don’t want him in my arms when I do this.” He took the
baby, careful to touch only the papoose and not the actual child, who looked
too terrified to even cry.
Spotting a particular fallen log that swarmed with
the blackness, I called out my fire and the log lit with light. The darkness
scattered. I concentrated on making the fire hotter until it was too bright to
look at.
Sammy cried out and my fire collapsed, leaving me a
little blind for a few seconds. A quick shift of my eyes showed me that the
darkness was gone.
At least for now.
I returned my eyes to normal and
looked at Dylan and Sammy. Dylan was holding his pentagram, pulsing with green
light, away from him and the child.
“Take him,” he said.
“What happened?”
“He cried when it touched his skin and then it
started to glow.” His eyes flashed with the same green light as the pentagram.
“It has been absorbing my magic since I’ve been wearing it.”
“How are you not out of energy?” I asked, taking
Sammy back.
“Because my body, my soul, whatever, keeps creating
more. The more I use, the faster I use it, the faster the energy is replaced.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“I am not supposed to be this. I’m human,” he said.
He was getting upset.
“You are sago, just as much as you are human.”
“The sago part I’m fine with. The freak part I’m
not.” He grabbed the baby bag and started walking in the direction we came
from. Just before he reached the edge of the clearing, an energy shield went up
in front of him, just like the one I had used to keep Dylan from getting on the
elevator. I didn’t create this one, though; Sammy did.
Without hesitating, slowing down, or even glancing
back, Dylan waved his hand at it. It crumbled instantly; my friend was getting
too powerful. Sure, any Guardian could do that, but there was no fluctuation at
all in his magic.
Like with physical strength, the more effort
something took, the more strain in energy. Moving a fallen tree by hand is more
difficult than moving a branch, but the same goes when using magic; moving a
fallen tree with energy took more force, and therefore caused more strain than
moving a branch with magic. This affected the energy around a person. When
Dylan’s magic was not impacted, it was essentially asserting that it took no
more effort to crumble Sammy’s shield than flicking a pen. If the child was
strong enough to create a visible energy shield, it was no small matter.
Sammy was using magic that took wizards like me years
to learn, and it was nothing to Dylan’s strength.
After a few minutes of walking in silence, an
arachnid skittered into our path. What was so bothersome about it was that the
red and black bug was as long as my arm and had fangs. In the past, when I
first met him, my friend would have freaked out and said something sarcastic
and bizarre. Dylan just kicked the monstrous creature out of the way and
continued.
This new side of Dylan was no fun.
Feel that?
I focused on my senses and felt something else was
near. This was a beast, not as terrifying as a black mist, but it definitely
would have teeth. I knew before we saw them that they were not hunting, but
searching, for we had wandered into their territory and they knew it.
“Dada, doggy coming,” Sammy warned.
What in the world is a “doggy”?
It sounded
horrible. “Something is a few minutes out, coming straight for us,” I
clarified.
“A dog of some kind, according to Sammy. We can
handle a dog.” He sounded more annoyed than worried. He had described dogs to
me before, and this didn’t feel like a docile pet to me.
“Not doggy,” Sammy argued. “A woof.”
“Woof is the sound dogs make, honey,” Dylan said.
“Not woof!” he demanded. Then the child howled a
sound entirely unnatural. It was a howl that caused a chill in my blood and
Rojan to get his back up. Even Dylan froze.
“A wolf? We can handle a…” The ethereal howl was
answered with another, from the beasts approaching. “Oh, it’s that kind of
wolf. We should run.”
“Run where? What is a wolf?”
“You know how I described a dog as like a small,
domestic draxuni?”
“Yeah.”
“Well a wolf is like a draxuni. Only, wolves don’t
howl like that. They do howl, but not like that. We should definitely go in
another direction.”
“But that is the way out. And you just kicked aside a
huge monster of a bug without a problem. We’ve already gone up against draxuni,
why are you worried about this?” I asked. He shrugged.
“Seriously, what’s
going on?”
He gave me a hard look.
“Drop it.”
“No.”
We hear another howl, much closer this
time. I slapped my hand over Sammy’s mouth when he tried to howl back. Dylan
put his pentagram, which was still glowing, back on.
“I have heard a howl like that, but only in movies.”
“What made that sound in movies?” I asked.
One of the creatures entered our limited light from
behind a massive tree. Covered in thick auburn fur, it did have the general
body shape of a draxuni, but I was thrown off by the proportionally larger head
and the fact that on four legs, its head came to my chest. Its ears were folded
back in anger and it was starling; revealing very large, very sharp teeth. A
second one jumped onto a huge, fallen tree to tower over us. This one had fur
as black as the shadows and all I could see clearly were its eyes and teeth.
“Werewolves,” Dylan answered.
“Is it too late to run?” I asked.
“I’d say so. Time to fight. Don’t let them scratch or
bite you. In the movies, if a werewolf bites you or scratches you, it would
spread the infection. I mean, I always thought it would be cool to shift into a
wolf, but dragons are much better.”
“Well, I could bite you and see if you turn into a
dragon.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “I’d be more
likely to turn into a turnip.”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
Apparently, the brown draxuni-like creature did not
like being ignored, because it snarled and leapt right in front of us. It opened
its mouth wider to show off its teeth, and Rojan roared. The wolf was asserting
her dominance, and I have no idea how I suddenly knew it was a she. Rojan was
bigger and badder and she would not get away with that. My eyes, teeth, and
claws shifted and I was snarling before I could stop myself. She stopped
snarling for a moment to stare in surprise, then she tried again. I took a step
towards her and let my fire rise to the surface. Smoke seeped from my mouth and
nostrils as I growled. It was all Rojan in charge.
The wolf before me started to change; her body
reshaped with sickening cracks and crunches and her fur receded until I was
looking at a beautiful woman… who was completely naked. Her hair was the same
color as the wolf’s fur and her eyes were a cold, bright, electric blue. She
was only marginally shorter than me and had a body of a woman who did physical
labor every day.
The fact that she shifted from her beast to her
person was a sign of submission, but when she looked me straight in the eyes, I
knew she wasn’t submitting completely. She was testing me. Rojan purred inside,
but I still growled until she finally looked away.
The other wolf was not deterred and tried to use the
distraction to advance on Dylan. I passed the woman to intercept the other
wolf, but Dylan purposely got in the way.
“You’re holding Sammy. Don’t pick
a fight just yet.”
I snarled at this wolf, who stopped just a couple
steps in front of Dylan. I wanted to pass Dylan the child and attack, but Dylan
wasn’t supposed to hold him.
Surely it wouldn’t hurt for Dylan to hold him
another minute so I can kill the challenging beast.
Yes, kill him,
Rojan jumped at the idea.
You can’t just kill him. The wolf is also a
person.
A person who challenges us. He threatens Dylan and
Sammy. He should die,
Rojan argued.
The woman said something in a beautiful, rather
jagged-sounding language. The wolf didn’t stop snarling, but he backed away a
few steps. Other wolves moved in to surround us when the black wolf turned and
disappeared into the forest. The woman indicated we should follow her as she
started in the direction the black wolf had gone.
“What do you think?” I asked Dylan.
He shrugged. “They want to take us to the wolf pack,
where we could be ambushed by hundreds of werewolves, and the black one isn’t
even afraid of a dragon.”
His words irritated Rojan and I couldn’t stop the
dragon’s response from leaving my mouth. “He had better fear me lest I will
burn him alive and eat him while he still begs for mercy.”