Fractured Lore (Broken Ashes #9)

Chapter One

Neith

With my gaze finally adjusted to our surroundings, I glance over at the guys to make sure that they’re all okay.

“Hey, you changed,” I blurt out when my eyes land on Baz. Because obviously that’s the most important thing to be concerned about right now, and not the fact that we’re in the middle of the Irish moors for some unknown reason.

Baz’s eyes widen slightly with panic as he looks down at himself, and then he breathes out a sigh of relief.

Well, that was an interesting reaction. I wonder what he thought I meant.

“I’m also not covered in mud and dried blood anymore. Your spirit guide must have something to do with it,” he replies. He crouches low and then stretches his legs out.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Raiden asks, looking slightly amused as he watches Baz do deep side lunges.

Baz shrugs, “I fucking hate jeans, they’re so restrictive.”

“Agreed,” River replies. “When we get back to the house, you can borrow some of my sweatpants, they’re the best.”

“Thanks,” Baz replies, still frowning and making weird leg movements that I’m trying really hard not to laugh at.

I’m obviously not hiding my amusement very well because he glances up at me and smirks, winks at me, and then starts doing even more exaggerated movements as I burst out laughing.

The Voices chastise me, although they do sound amused.

Right, serious situation.

“Ransom, could you . . .” Van starts to ask, and then suddenly I’m no longer being pelted in the face with rain and battered by wind, as Ransom puts a ward up around us to protect us from the elements and from anyone who may be listening.

“You are my favorite today,” I tell him honestly.

He grins, “Good.”

“So, the spirit guides clearly know who you are,” Raiden points out, looking at Baz.

“Fucking hell, you’re right,” Baz frowns, finally stopping moving weirdly. “That didn’t even click when he said it, but it’s obvious from what the little angry raccoon said. They know the real me, not the one who has forgotten.”

“Winston!” I shout. I know that if I were Baz, I would want answers as soon as possible.

I definitely wouldn’t want to wait. Unfortunately, and rather predictably, he doesn’t show up.

“I’m sorry. To be fair, I didn’t think he would show up.

He doesn’t like answering questions, he just likes making us have more. ”

Baz smiles, “Thank you. I appreciate it, but I haven’t had my memory for decades now, a bit longer won’t make a difference. From what I remember about spirit guides, he might not actually know who I am, he could just know that I was meant to find you all.”

“That makes sense, actually. You don’t feel like a stranger,” Reed admits thoughtfully.

Baz smiles, and I think that Reed’s words mean more to him than he wants to let on.

“I think maybe we should work out why Winston transported us to the middle of the Irish moors and just left us here, with no other instructions,” I point out, since we all seem to have gotten a bit distracted and none of us is really focusing on the task at hand.

“He said that we needed to get something,” River replies with a frown. “I’m just glad he let us eat first.”

“It would have been really handy if he’d told us what exactly it was that we needed to get so urgently that it had to be gotten right now, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, rather than telling us in the morning, after Baz got some much needed rest after the shit he’s been through,” I rant.

“Actually, fuck that, all of you, apart from Griff and me, because we managed to nap.”

The guys just stare at me for a moment, all of them with the same expression, even Baz, and River pulls me into his arms.

I melt into him.

“It’s alright, deep breath. Maybe call Asael and Betty, they always make you feel better,” he suggests.

“Asael and Betty?” Baz asks.

I grin and call them both, “Baz, meet Asael and Betty.”

He stares at me for a moment and then shakes his head slightly, “You know what, I think I’m already learning that I shouldn’t be surprised when Neith surprises me.”

Coen chuckles, “Now, you’re getting it.”

I roll my eyes and put Asael behind me. I still love that he comes with scabbards, it's really handy.

“As much as I hate to suggest this, I think you might need to take the ward down, Ransom, so that we can see what it is that Winston wants us to find,” Griff suggests. “I know that you can do the see-through thing, but something tells me that we’re supposed to be in it. If that makes sense.”

Ransom nods, “Unfortunately, it does.”

“Hang on,” Doc says, and he disappears. It doesn’t take long until he’s back and handing out jackets to everyone, including Baz.

“Sorry, Ransom, Doc is now tied with you for first place,” I tease, earning a mock shocked look from him.

“Thanks, man,” Van says as he pulls on his jacket. He looks at Ransom, “Alright, let’s do this, I guess.”

Ransom nods, and then the barrier that was protecting us from the elements disappears.

I groan, “Oh, I’m going to kick his ass.”

“I’ll help,” Raiden mutters.

My eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness, since Ransom had the inside of the ward lit so that we could see a bit better, and then I stare. I love the moors. It’s wild, untamed, and vast.

Honestly, it’s one of my favorite places.

When it’s absolutely hammering it down with rain, and the wind is trying to take my face off, I enjoy it slightly less.

Winston appears to have dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, there is nothing for as far as the eye can see, not even a road. At least not one that I can see through my squinting eyes.

Suddenly, the sky lights up with lightning again, briefly illuminating the vast landscape.

“I think I saw something over there,” Baz says, as he points to the left of us and up the hill.

Van nods, “Alright, let’s go and see what we can find. I know I don’t need to ask, but for my own peace of mind, are you all armed?”

The guys all grin and nod, and Baz does the same.

“How?” Ransom asks, “You were in a cell.”

Baz just grins, “Ah, now that would be telling.”

I chuckle as the guys smirk. Yeah, he fits in rather well with us.

We all stay alert as we fight the elements, heading in the direction where Baz thought he saw something. We climb up a steep hill, making sure we don’t trip over any of the rocks sticking up and trying to avoid getting tangled up and ending up in a gorse bush.

Gorse is super pretty when it flowers, but spikey. I would not recommend falling into it, that shit hurts.

By the time we get to the top of the hill, my thighs are burning, and I’m cursing Winston even more than I already was. I bet he put us down here instead of next to whatever it is that we need to find because I said he was cute when he was mad.

He’s a little vindictive.

“What am I looking at?” I ask when we get to the top, the rain thankfully becoming more of a drizzle and less of a pounding torrent.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Raiden replies, and then his eyes widen.

“It’s an ancient summoning circle. At least I think it is.

The huge pillars around the edge helped to harness the elements, and then they would summon things.

The things that they summoned would appear in the middle of the circle, trapped. ”

“Things?” Griff asks, his eyebrows raised curiously.

Raiden nods, “Yeah, the books weren’t that clear on what exactly they were trying to summon hundreds of years ago. They weren’t limited to here either, they were all over the realms. From what I remember, every realm had a summoning circle.”

“They were used for rituals as well,” Baz adds. “And ceremonies, sending the dead to the Spirit Realms, the joining of souls, that kind of thing.”

Raiden’s eyes light up, “That’s fascinating. Do you know all of this stuff like all of the time, or only when it’s brought up do you remember it?”

Baz smiles slightly, “All of the time. As I explained before, the only thing I seem to have forgotten is anything that would tell me who I am. Selective amnesia, I think they call it.”

“That’s really interesting. We could . . .” Raiden starts.

“Raiden, dude, let’s find this thing that Winston wants us to find, and then get some sleep, and then you can pick Baz’s brains for all the information that he has. If Winston is right, and I doubt that he’s wrong, then Baz isn’t going anywhere any time soon,” River points out.

Raiden smirks and then looks at Baz, “Sorry, man. Sometimes my brain gets carried away with me, and I forget that people may not want to share. Just tell me to fuck off. I won’t take offense, I promise.”

Baz chuckles, “I will, but I didn’t take offense. If you can help me figure out how to get my memories back, or figure out who the fuck I am, then I’m all for it.”

“Someone must remember you,” Ransom says with a frown.

Baz’s expression clouds, and he shakes his head, “I got fed up with not knowing anything a few years ago, so I risked going into one of the towns. I went into the local tavern and asked the owner to put an announcement out across all of the realms, asking if anyone knew who I was. I asked him to run it for a month, but I had to stop checking it because the attacks from the Hunt got too severe and regular. No one ever came forward, and I didn’t try again.

I had to avoid the towns completely after that because the Hunt put a bounty on my head. ”

“Fuck,” Van mutters. “I’m really sorry, man.”

Baz shrugs, “There’s a chance that the right people just didn’t see it, I mean, it wasn’t up there for very long.”

“That’s a really good point,” Raiden replies.

“Or they didn’t have the means to be able to respond, or the announcement was taken down before they could, or even that the Hunt interfered and messed with it before it went live, or soon after it went live.

You said you were checking it. Did you actually see the announcement when you checked it?

” Griff says, listing some of the reasons that no one came forward.

Baz’s eyes widen slightly, “No, I was checking to see if there were any responses. I hadn’t considered that the Hunt could be involved, but of course they were.

I wonder if the announcement even went out in the first place.

They didn’t want me to escape, and people were terrified of them, the owner of the tavern would have done whatever they told him to do. ”

I nod, “I bet it didn’t go live.”

Baz shakes his head and then changes the subject, “I’m sorry I pulled us away from what we’re supposed to be doing. We can go over it more later.”

“Nice,” Raiden grins. “And don’t worry about it.

This clearly isn’t as urgent as Winston made it out to be, and it’s good that we managed to help you figure something out that you didn’t know before.

Hopefully, we can keep helping you. Let's go and check out this summoning circle. It’s quite impressive. ”

Baz nods, looking grateful, and we all head toward the stone circle.

Raiden isn’t wrong. The stone pillars are made out of roughly cut granite, with veins of quartz threading through them and glittering prettily despite the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any light, the moon isn’t even out.

They look ancient.

They tower above us, and they’re set out in a kind of circle with the pillars evenly spaced, and a granite plinth in the middle of it. They’re covered in moss and grass, and as we get closer, I realize that we’re actually perched atop a cliff, the sea crashing on the rocks angrily below.

“Wow, this is quite a place,” Reed says. “At least the rain has slowed down.”

“Winston said that there’s something here that we need to get, but it can’t be the stone circle, that’s too big, and although we seem to be pretty isolated up here, I’m reasonably certain that someone would notice if the stones suddenly went missing,” Doc points out.

Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that taking the whole thing with us was a possibility. Sometimes I forget just how strong they really are.

“There must be something around here that we’re supposed to get then,” Griff replies. “Let’s spread out and see if we can see anything. I would imagine that it’s near the pillars or in the circle because we wouldn’t have been brought here otherwise.”

“Good point,” Van agrees, he looks at Ransom, “is it dormant, or are we about to accidentally summon something when we step into the circle?”

Ransom smiles, “I already checked, it’s dormant, don’t worry. There’s no magic running through it, so we should be good.”

“Should?” Baz asks with his eyebrow raised in question.

Raiden smirks, “Well, magic is involved and most likely really old magic.” He looks at me, “And Neith, so there’s always a chance that those two things mixed together could trigger something.”

My mouth drops open.

“Well, that was rude,” I retort, although I can’t hide my smile because, as much as I hate to admit it, he’s probably right.

“Actually, I know you’re going to get mad at me for suggesting this, but maybe you should look on the outside of the circle Nene. Don’t step inside it,” Van suggests. “Just in case.”

I sigh, “Fine. If it makes you all feel better, I won’t step a single foot in the dormant, ancient, magical circle of rocks.”