Chapter 49 Elariya
Elariya
“When the Past meets the Present”
Ileaned against the window of the sunroom, watching the morning brighten to welcome the new day.
Arielle sat cross-legged on the sofa, flicking through the pages of a spell book. After last night, she’d decided our best course of action was to resume my training.
Mostly, I thought she’d come to that decision because she didn’t know what else to do. I understood. It was easier to seek refuge under the guise of training than to accept defeat.
But I did not feel the same.
My heart was troubled, unsettled even. I felt we were focusing on the wrong thing. The problem was, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I was also worried about Wolfe.
I woke to an empty bed, his space cold like he hadn’t been there for most of the night.
When I went downstairs to search for him, Garrick told me Wolfe had been called away for the day.
It wasn’t the first time that he had to leave early on business, but there was something about the way Garrick said it that felt wrong. Or maybe that was just me.
I wasn’t myself.
Last night messed me up. I was so sure of the power that surged through me I fully believed I’d find the ring.
I was still in shock that I hadn’t.
And Wolfe…
He looked so heartbroken.
Then there was that thing with his blood. The spell… rejected it. His explanation made sense, but it had little to do with why the spell would reject his blood.
If anything, I would have thought it should have helped. But it didn’t. Nothing helped. Not even my attempt to weave through the strands of time.
More than anything, I’d wanted my memories back.
I wanted my life back. But I wanted Wolfe to have his life back too—the curse removed and the kingdom restored, in his hands.
Telling him I loved him was the best thing about last night. The next best thing was just being with him. We felt like two people lost in the throes of love.
I wished I’d told him I loved him sooner. He’d shared his feelings repeatedly, and in so many ways.
I wanted to wait until I could say the words and I knew it would mean something to him. Last night felt like that. And I really wanted to see him.
I’d even searched that connection thing we were supposed to share, but I couldn’t sense him anywhere. So here I was, just standing here.
Arielle looked up at me and sighed with uneasiness. “Elariya, please try to focus.”
“I can’t focus. I can’t even think straight.”
“If we keep on training, we’re actively doing something.”
“Well, I can’t do that,” I scoffed, pushing away from the wall. “The spell should have worked.”
“But it didn’t.” Her voice raised a notch. “Now we have to keep going. If you need more skill to find the ring then training is the answer.”
“It didn’t feel like I needed more skill.”
“But we know you still need more skill because you have to get your dragon.”
I gazed back at her, all my thoughts and feelings colliding in a chaotic mess. But deep down, there was a lone pulse. Like knowledge.
Something that told me I was right.
I walked over to Arielle and sat in front of her. “I don’t know how I know, but I think we were on the right track all along. Memories first, dragon next, then retrieve the ring.”
“Elariya, we were just assuming. Not even the Seer gave a straight answer. I can only imagine that wherever the ring is must be hard to find because of the powers after it.”
“I know, but please, humor me. Let’s just explore some… ideas. Can we do that please?”
Her shoulders sagged and she nodded, setting the book down. “Fine, what are you thinking?”
“It’s more like feeling. My Grandmother always told me to trust my feelings and right now I’m as unsettled as all the hells.”
She made a face at me. “I can see that.”
“Let’s start with what we know so far. Tell me about the last time we attempted the spell. What happened?”
“Pretty much everything like last night, except we never sensed the ring, or heard it. Last night the map also took us much further. I swore we’d found the ring. I felt the pulse of it. Heard it calling. None of those things happened before.”
“So we were very close. Like maybe we did find it but missed something?”
“Yeah, but clearly the thing we missed is the thing we still need.”
“Let’s just think out loud. If I don’t need more skill, and I don’t need my dragon, what else could I need?”
She thought for a moment then gave up, shaking her head. “I really hate to say this, but I don’t know. This is a complex issue because we’re dealing with an artifact that thinks like a person.”
Something came to me. “So then let’s think like a person. A person who’s terrified of getting in the wrong hands, and they’re hiding, but also leaving clues for us to find.”
The tension in her face eased. “Okay. And we know the dark forces are very dark, so a powerful person would make sure they stayed hidden well. But not so they couldn’t ever be found.”
“Exactly. I believe we sensed it because we were on the right track, but we weren’t looking in the right place. Or we couldn’t see it.” I thought back and tried to remember the way the map looked but I couldn’t think of anything else that stood out to me.
“The map stopped blank in the air within a sea of temporal realms. I recognized some of the names. The problem is there are countless. The ring could have been on any or none of the ones we saw.”
“But we were close by or we wouldn’t have felt the ring’s presence. Don’t the temporal realms shift?”
“They do but they just move between past, present and future. You’d still be able to find them though if you knew where you were going.”
Something sparked in my mind. An idea. From what she said.
Moving between past and present and future. But what about the other variant of time? The unchosen outcome. Possibility.
I’d only made a connection with the time continuum by anchoring in the past and future. But what if the ring wasn’t in a realm that drifted between those variants?
I stood and placed a finger on my lips.
“What is it?” Arielle asked.
“Are there realms of possibility, from the unchosen outcomes?”
Her spine went straight and her eyes widened. “Yes, there are. But…they’re exceedingly hard to find.”
“If we’re thinking of the ring as a person in trouble, I believe the ring would go there. To a place like that. Incredibly hard to find, but not impossible. It would not make it easy for the dark forces to find it, even if it is already hidden.”
“Oh, Gods. I think…” She stood too. “I think you’re right. And that might explain why we felt it but we couldn’t see it. Possibility realms drift in the in-between.”
Gods, we were getting somewhere. “This is good. This feels right. But now for the hard part. How do I see it?”
“Maybe you need to see through the threads of time, like you tried last night. But it’s harder with possibility realms. Possibility threads are unstable.
You don’t know where they branched or what shaped them.
It would be the same with an entire realm.
You’d need something to anchor you while you search…
and something to guide the path. Like a compass. ”
If we’re right that would explain why the map couldn’t lock on to the location. “What could I use for a compass? Maybe that’s the missing thing.”
Magdalena hadn’t taught us that yet. I left that poor lady bamboozled. She hadn’t expected to do so much with me, and she worried I was going to burn out. We had today off to recuperate.
“You would need something that could move between different states of time,” Arielle continued. “Or the magic from an object or…” Her words slowed. “Gods, a creature.”
Creature. Damn it. “Like my familiar? My dragon.”
She bit the inside of her lip and nodded. “Time dragons, can do that and their magic can be used to weave through the continuum of past, present, future and possibility.” She drew in a shallow breath. “If the ring is hiding in a possibility realm… a time-dragon would definitely reach it.”
“I don’t have the dragon,” I muttered.
Silence fell between us.
“And you cannot complete bonding in eleven days,” Arielle added. “Even with your outstanding abilities we’d need a few more weeks. A month tops. But then the dragon would still need to call to you. We don’t know how long that could take.”
Frustration clawed up my spine. “I feel like there’s something I can do now. I just—”
Threads of silver poured through the window and floated around my arms.
“What now?” Arielle snapped.
“Nyzith Strands.”
She gasped. “They’re here?”
I’d forgotten she couldn’t see them.
I nodded vigorously. “They’re all over me.”
“Elariya. This is important. It’s the ring’s magic. They only appear when they want to show you something. Pay attention.”
I was. My eyes were peeled to them.
The strands swirled in silver loops, then they started to sing a melodious harmony right before flying through the door.
My mother’s voice came back to me. Follow the Nyzith Strands, they will lead you to your destiny.
So I followed them. And Arielle followed me.
We chased the dancing strands right down the hallway and out onto the balcony where they sparkled in the air, like stars in the sun. Then they gathered together and hummed, pulsing in the direction of the caves. The dragon caves.
“What’s happening? Are they still there?” Arielle asked, searching the air.
“Yeah,” I panted. “They’re pointing to the dragon caves.”
She looked back at me with wide eyes. “Blessed Mother. This happened the first time we tried the tracking spell. You and Wolfe came out here.”
I recalled the journal entry about that day, then I remembered what the Seer said. “My dragon is in that cave.”
Not where. When. That was what she’d said.
“It is in that cave. On a temporal plane.”
As if answering us, the Nyzith Strands sang on top of their lungs.
“From the look on your face the strands just did something. Didn’t they?” she observed.
“They did. That must mean we’re on the right track. But what can we do?”
Arielle gazed ahead. "The Nightblades have raised dragons here for millennia. If the cave leads you to one, it's quite possible it was born here. Creatures like that form bonds with the places they come from."
“If it were raised here, I’d be able to see some past version of it.” I stared deeply at her, my mind still processing.
“Yes.” She winced. “And I have a really bad idea. A really, really bad idea.”
“Tell me.”
“The rules of time forbid you from using the continuum to take things from the past to make use of it in the future.”
“Then we can’t break the rules.” Magdalena had warned that catastrophic things could happen if a person dared to do so.
“We won’t. Those rules apply to physical objects, not magic. Not essence. You could use the threads of time to see if your dragon was ever in the cave. And if it was, you could collect an echo of its essence and use that as a compass. Then… maybe we could find the ring.”
Blessed Mother.
That could be it.
The answer.