Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

Trial by Leaf

“Right,” Mak said, “I’dsay that’s a sign the Changing Queen wanted this secret to stay secret.”

Knight didn’t move to investigate their surroundings. Calm but alert, he stood close to Cassia. She put a hand on him. “Is this like the other Lustra passages? None of you can step right now?”

The other three shook their heads.

“This is astonishing.” Lio reached out toward one of the ivy walls.

Cassia tried to catch his hand and stop him, but her new immortal reflexes weren’t quite as fast as his yet.

He rubbed a leaf between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s solid. Not an illusion, then. I can also tell it’s not some kind of waking dream created by mind magic to trick our brains into thinking all of this is real. It is real.”

Lyros shook his head. “No elemental magic or other mageia can manipulate reality like this.”

“This isn’t mageia or manteia,” Lio said. “It’s hulaia. The raw power of creation. We’re walking through the lost paradigm of magic right now, as it hasn’t been seen since the Silvicultrixes were at the peak of their power.”

Cassia drew Rosethorn. “I’ll have more appreciation for the magical significance after we find our way out of this. All of you stay close to me.”

Lyros nodded. “If we search each turn and mark the ways we’ve already tried, we should be able to find the correct path.”

“I’ll draw a map as we go.” Lio pulled a scroll out of his case.

“How shall we mark our way?” Cassia asked.

“Not with anything magical,” Lio suggested, “including blood. We don’t know how other powers interact with this spell.”

Mak pulled a small pouch out of his pocket and gave it a forlorn look. “All I brought with me are Tuura’s candied almonds.”

Lyros patted his arm. “A necessary sacrifice.”

Mak sighed and dropped one of the treats on the ground.

“All right. Might as well try forward first.” Cassia led the way along the twisting path ahead of them.

Their steps sounded muffled in the maze. The only other sound was a whisper of leaves against leaves. They’d walked several paces when Lyros, bringing up the rear, cursed.

She looked back. Their starting point and the almond they’d left there were nowhere to be seen. A completely different intersection of three paths lay behind them now. Cassia whirled to look ahead, only to find the single trail had changed into a fork in the path.

“So much for marking our way,” Lyros said grimly. “We can’t map a labyrinth that grows into a different shape with every step we take.”

Mak popped one of the candied almonds in his mouth, then slipped another one to Knight. “Tuura’s provisions are saved.”

Lyros’s expression betrayed a hint of frustration as he glanced at Mak.

Mak shrugged too casually. “Maybe thinking isn’t the right tactic in here. Cassia, what feels like the right way to go? Your intuition seems to be working just fine, at least.”

Cassia knew when someone was having two conversations at once, the one you could hear and understand and the hidden one beneath. She aways knew what to do with a secret layer of meaning that held political significance.

But hearing the layers of hurt in Mak and Lyros’s conversation, she felt out of her depth. Love was always harder than politics. She had to figure out how to help.

They’re veiling their emotions,she lamented to Lio silently.

I don’t understand. They seemed all right when they got back from their patrol.

Have they said anything to you about how things are between them since…we left Orthros?

I wish. Perhaps if we each try talking to one of them when the other isn’t listening, we can get them to confide in us.

All the more reason we need to get out of this maze.

Cassia gave them both a reassuring smile. “That was a clever plan, Lyros. I’m sorry my ancestors’ magic is so tricky. Let’s try Mak’s excellent suggestion next.”

Very diplomatic, Lio said in her mind, putting his scroll away.

Lyros rubbed his neck and nodded. Mak sighed.

Cassia consulted her intuition again, as she had when they’d searched for the stone circle. She felt a tug and started walking. Several paces brought them to an open circle in the ivy maze.

“This looks promising,” Lio said.

A soft rushing sound chased his words. The rustle became the groan of vines.

The circle of ivy started to grow, shrinking the space around them.

“No. Hurry, back this way!” Cassia dashed for the archway they had just come through.

The ivy grew together faster than immortals could run, sealing the only way out.

They retreated to the center of the circle and put their backs to each other to face the advancing ivy.

“Our wards aren’t working!” Mak cried. “We can’t cast anything in here.”

Chain belts rattled as the other three drew their weapons. The ring of vine walls coiled tighter. stealing their time to strategize as Cassia wracked her mind for a plan.

Yet Lio’s voice was calm. “Pretend the ivy vines are those roses you retrained in the Ritual hall. Use your magic to make it grow where you Will.”

It had taken her many nights of effort to achieve that. Now she had mere moments.

But she didn’t confess her self-doubt aloud in front of their Trial brothers, who had so bravely defended her before. She wouldn’t let everyone down this time. She couldn’t.

There was only one person here who could save them from rabid Lustra magic, and it was her.

This time her emotions didn’t hold her power back. They drove her magic deep down into the letting site. The instant she tapped it, the full force of its power shot up through her, rooting her to the spot where she stood.

Not her letting site, with its gentle, ravenous blood magic. Not the wounded beast at Paradum. A living letting site, ancient and lush, pouring forth the power of the Lustra through the stems and branches of her body. She held out her hands, her breath coming hard. She felt so alive.

“Cassia, it’s only growing faster!” Mak’s warning reached her from a distance.

A coil of ivy slid around her throat, caressing. Then began to tighten.

She gasped and clutched the tendril, but it was too strong even for her immortal hand to break. She sliced at her ivy noose with her dagger. Where she cut off a branch, two more grew in its place.

She looked frantically around her. Lio held off a branch with Final Word. Knight snapped, growling, but every time his jaws tore through a vine, there was always another.

She bared her fangs at the vicious plants. She had not reclaimed her magic only for her own legacy to defeat her now. She would not let the Changing Queen’s power treat her like a foolish apprentice, not when she was the last and only Silvicultrix it had.

And yet, she was an apprentice. None of the skills she’d learned so far were of any use. Not intuition. Not a battle of Will with the raw power of a letting site. Least of all her dagger, the most basic of her artifacts, which she had clumsily wielded when she had no knowledge of magic at all.

She needed advanced magic. Kalos’s lesson came back to her. …you need a triune focus…the most powerful Lustra artifacts…

She closed her hand over her pendant so tightly that the ivy carvings dug into her skin. Its magic, familiar and yet unknown, whispered to her. She tried to feed her power into it.

It didn’t respond except with those whispers, almost but not quite understandable, mocking her.

She let out a cry of disbelief. What good was the Changing Queen’s focus if it did nothing against her traps?

Lio and Lyros stood on opposite sides of the group, their staff and spear braced against the oncoming wall of ivy, their arms straining. Mak swung the Star of Orthros at the green mass, leaving a swath of damage that closed in an instant. A vine snaked up his leg, tracing the laces of his sandal.

She tightened her hand on Rosethorn’s hilt, remembering his kind words.

I couldn’t bear for you to lose it. You can’t replace an artifact like that, not when your battles have created it for you.

What had Kalos said? A focus has to be made. You give it life by using it during rituals.

Perhaps the pendant wasn’t the only focus she had. Perhaps it wasn’t the right one for this ritual.

Perhaps Rosethorn was not a beginner’s artifact at all.

She let her eyes slide shut and placed her trust in the constant power of her spade.

The letting site honed in on the blade. Its staggering power concentrated into a focused current. She Willed it out at the vines.

As if time had stopped, they froze. The air seemed ready to explode with a single held breath of magic.

She pushed harder with her magic through the dagger. The vines whipped backward, retreating. They reformed themselves into still, tame walls.

Lio faced her and took hold of her arms. Only he could be smiling at a time like this. “Well done, Silvicultrix.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “That was too close.”

“It was brilliant casting.” Lyros leaned on Night’s Aim. “Not everyone can learn and adapt under duress like that.”

Mak ran his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry my suggestion got us deeper into trouble.”

Lyros put an arm around him. “Mine wasn’t any better.”

Cassia held out her dagger. “Mak, you’re the one who got us out of trouble. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t saved my spade and reforged it for me.”

He frowned in confusion. “But cutting the vines with the weapon didn’t work.”

“Casting through it did. It’s not just a weapon, Mak. It’s one of my three foci.”

The regret on his expressive face cleared, giving way to a hint of a smile. “Really? Those artifacts Kalos told you about?”

She nodded. “I need three to form a complete triune focus. They’re incredibly hard to make, especially since so much knowledge is lost. This one was forged through all my experiences. It’s irreplaceable. And it just saved our lives.”

Mak put one arm around her and hugged her. “I’m glad.”

Lyros pointed at Rosethorn. “Can it lead us out of here?”

“Perhaps something better.” Cassia closed both hands around the hilt and directed the letting site’s magic through the blade again. She let the power permeate the veins of the ivy. The vines shrank in on themselves, turned back into fresh green seedlings, then ducked into the soil and wrapped themselves tight in their seeds.

The labyrinth was gone. What remained was a wild marsh wreathed in fog. The cool damp crept around their ankles, and night insects hummed. A semicircle of standing stones blocked the path behind them, and a single trail led ahead of them into the mists.

“This can’t be inside the tower,” Mak muttered.

“It’s not anywhere in the surrounding woods, either,” said Lyros. “We would have smelled the water.”

“It’s a world of the Changing Queen’s making.” Lio started forward, holding his staff like a walking stick, his robes swirling behind him. “Let’s go further in and see what mystery she has in store for us next.”

Cassia held on to his fearless curiosity, so strong in their Union. Together, they all forged deeper into her ancestor’s strange testing ground.