Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Fate must have watched over her, for Aela made it mostly unscathed to her cave on the other side of The Spine.
The dust storm had remained high, blowing over her before crashing down onto the desert, which had allowed her safe passage through the rocky slopes.
Even the scrawny lions kept to their dens.
She staggered under the young vines that Renee had painstakingly cultivated to conceal the round entrance of their hewn home.
When Aela fell from the sky a century ago, she formed a tunneled crater in the mountain range.
It was the perfect refuge. Far enough away from civilization, yet close enough when the basest survival needs brought her out of the hovel.
There was no one to greet her since a wasting disease had taken Renee’s life.
Aela walked on unsteady legs deeper into the tunnel, which opened into a larger cavern.
A shade garden grew along the right side of the entrance her pallet of blankets lay against the opposite wall, and a series of shelves she had chiseled into the natural stone held her supplies. It wasn’t much, but it was home.
Renee had found her naked as the day she came from the nebulae, and she had raised her as her own, hiding a fallen star in plain sight.
Still trembling with the aftershock of what had happened yet again in the mountain village, Aela tried to calm her erratic breathing.
Each breath was like a fresh laceration to her ribs.
Not for the first time, Aela wanted to curse her adoptive mother for bringing her to the village in the mountains.
She knew it was unfair to fault Renee in that.
She had done Aela a kindness she didn’t deserve by taking her in and raising her.
Even though Renee unwittingly sealed the town’s fate by bringing Aela there.
No. The lives lost in the mountain village were a weight Aela would carry for the rest of her existence. A stain upon her flawed, ancient soul.
How she was even conscious after recent events was beyond her.
Aela barely made it to the far wall of her cave and dropped her pack.
Her fingers grasped at the rough shelves and knocked over precious crystals in her haste to find a tonic to ease her symptoms. Her stomach churned and vibrated anew with pent-up energy.
Darkness closed in as her body collapsed onto the stone floor.
Her subconscious fled to the one place it felt safe.
Submerged in water, Aela didn’t startle.
The healing waters of her home planet Solara held her in a silent, welcoming embrace.
A ripple of awareness danced across her mind.
And with it, sorrow, deeper than the depths of the ocean, stabbed into her heart.
She knew it was only a dream; she couldn’t be home.
Home was far away in a black diamond flecked sky.
Even though it was just a dream, Aela urged her body to soak in the healing properties of the water, for she knew the experience was fleeting.
Her magic thrived in her dreams and had a way of taking care of her.
The tepid liquid did more than heal the scrapes along her body and reset broken bones; it soothed over the old scars gouged in her soul.
When Aela entered her dreamscape, she had an acute awareness.
While others could dream fanciful fictions, their hearts’ deepest desires, and nightmares that would dissipate upon waking, Aela maintained a lucid state that allowed her full dominion over all things in her dreams. That connection, that power she had over her dreams, often blurred the line between what was harmless imagination and what was a harrowing memory that bled from her dreamscape into reality.
It was those dreams that threatened to consume her—and anyone close enough when her nightmares broke into the waking world. This other gift was more of a curse.
Though they tried to hide it, her parents had been afraid when more than her elemental gifts manifested.
She knew they wanted to protect her, but so much of her younger years were edged with secrecy.
In keeping herself hidden. Never letting others get too close for fear of what they would learn.
All she ever wanted was to be understood.
Still, a power such as hers—if discovered—would be hunted down and exploited.
She knew that. If her dreams could alter reality, there was no telling what she could do, or what others would do to take it.
Aela kicked her feet and swam for the surface.
She knew her body was resting somewhere apart from her mind while she walked the in-between plane.
Reveling in the luxurious feeling of being in her natural element, she banished the burden her power brought her and indulged in the calm and restful state her subconscious conjured.
Aela pulled her native water deep into her lungs, expelling bubbles that trailed upward.
A comfortable weightlessness surrounded her, and her body slowly floated toward the warmer waters of the surface.
As she emerged, the ocean sluiced down her body leaving dry, pristine clothing behind.
She shifted herself above the gently undulating water, coming to sit on top of the ocean.
Opening her eyes, the sky ahead beckoned a new day.
With deft fingers, she unwound the rest of her braid and let the long, wavy strands fall down her back.
Without the intense heat of Prente’s dual suns, Aela smiled at the amethyst hue of the sky and chalky pink clouds overhead.
Her typical waking hours were a wash of browns and grays or darkness while in the mines.
The palette before her now was like seeing the crystals she unearthed come to life and brought an appreciative hum from her.
Aela trailed her fingertips along the watery surface. Casting her awareness outward, she searched for any other sign of life. Her heart ached knowing she wouldn’t find anyone, but it didn’t stop her from searching for more of her Line anytime she dreamed.
“She is the last of us.” Her mother Alrescha’s voice echoed in her head.
They were the last words her mother had uttered before everything changed.
Aela snapped her eyes closed as her breath caught in a staccato rhythm.
The ocean became turbulent around her, and the waves built higher and higher, heralding a storm.
Violet-white lightning, inherited from her mother, forked down from a now ominous sky as it speared down in jagged streaks.
The heavy clouds emptied a deluge, pelting her skin.
She hovered above the water and became one with the sea as it sensed her turmoil and writhed beneath her in response.
A mighty tempest roared, hungry for more of her rage.
The rising monsoon provided her with an outlet; Aela didn’t hold back as she let herself feel everything and poured her emotions back into the wild spray.
Here, safe in her dreams with no casualties save for herself, she could release and test the near bottomless depths of her power.
So much for a calm and restful dream.
Aela knew she needed to reel in the storm.
The more energy she exerted in her dreamscape, the longer she would need to recover later and the more likely she was to draw something into her dream.
Power called to power. It was a cosmic phenomenon she didn’t understand fully.
Aela leapt into the sky, twirling through the roaring winds that lashed her hair around her face, and breathed the misty air deep into her lungs.
A familiar itch crested between her shoulder blades—she was being watched. As if on cue, another power was drawn to hers, as it always was in her dreams, bringing with it an innate sense of dread… or was it anticipation?
The freedom she allowed herself in her dreamscape, of being unseen, unbound, and untamed, was gone as if pricked by a needle, and she dove closer to the ocean surface.
With loving hands, she soothed the waves to stillness.
The wind followed suit, and the rain above was reduced to a trickle, heeding her gentle command.
The clouds kept a navy hue, ready to release another downpour at a moment’s notice.
Aela walked along the mostly still water where not a trace remained of the turbulent squall that had been there moments before.
The water soothed her as much as she soothed it.
She shifted her gaze across her planet, seeking the source of her discomfort.
Racing toward her from the horizon were finite cracks and silver lace spreading over the ocean.
An icy chill crept through her bare feet.
Hissing, she tucked her knees up and levitated, peering down at the intricate frozen pattern that formed atop the water.
As she reached out to trace the frozen design, her head snapped up, the feeling of unseen eyes suddenly on her.
Aela soared above the navy clouds for a better vantage point.
Utter stillness greeted her. An eeriness permeated the air, and if Aela had hackles, they’d have risen.
There. In the distance, the clouds beneath massed together, darkening into a blackness deeper than the realm’s velvet sky.
Cold mist took her breath away as it speared from the darkened clouds.
While she hovered in the air, Aela swiped at the gathering mist, which quickly took on the appearance of black ribbons, like tendrils of the realm itself.
Panic seized her lungs, still void of air.
An odd sense of familiarity came as the darkness swirled around her, though the thought was fleeting as she tried to break free.
Instinct overrode her fear and she shifted.
Without making a splash, Aela appeared deep beneath the ocean, and she lay in wait. Her mind homed in on the darkness hovering over the healing waters. The filtered light through the water grew dimmer until the entire world above succumbed to a blanket of night.
“Time to go,” Aela whispered to herself, trailing bubbles.
She willed her body to wake before the looming darkness could snare her, but she remained in her dream.
She began to glow, to provide herself with a little light, and she watched the bubbles float higher until they disappeared from her view.
A massive hand made entirely of golden-tinged shadow plunged down for her, and Aela screamed, releasing more bubbles in front of her.
In the next moment, a creature she had long since believed to be a myth, appeared and opened its mighty jaw, biting through the hand.
The beast’s scales were a blur of blues and greens, but she didn’t have more than a moment to see them before the momentum from its massive body propelled her away.
In a blink, Aela returned to her body, lying on the rocky ground of her cave.
She rolled onto her side as water expelled from her lungs roughly, and she coughed until she successfully sucked in the dry air of Prente.
Aela shivered, sat up, and glanced down at her sopping wet clothing.
Try as she might, she couldn’t call forth a trickle of water outside her dreams. She had tried countless times to summon water since she had been stuck on the desert planet, but the element of her House never heeded her call unless she was in her dreamscape.
As evidenced by her sodden appearance, her other gift had no qualms about manifesting.
She had learned her lesson the hard way—thinking she could live a human life, form friendships, fall in love.
The facade of a normal life only gave the Fates more to take away from her.
She needed to learn to control it. What would happen if something far more destructive, like what happened to her village, happened again?
As she matured, her power only grew stronger and was increasingly difficult to ignore.
She was a threat to everyone around her.
The questions she had about her past were stacking up, and she had little to no answers to shift the weight of them.
Anxious about recent events, Aela paced the inside perimeter of her cave.
She had lived on Prente for a century, and in all that time, no one had suspected she was anything other than someone who simply didn’t fit in.
How did Kaitos find her? Who was Kaitos?
What House did he belong to? His charred remains flashed before her eyes.
It doesn’t matter who he was anymore, only that he was sent to deliver me to someone. Elnath?
The name was as foreign as Kaitos was to her.
Aela chewed at her thumb nail as her feet quickened their pace around the cave.
Her thoughts raced while the rest of her vibrated into alignment.
It had been an age since she had last been among her kind.
Who knew what alliances were in place? Kaitos’ presence on Prente proved that there was a way off the planet.
He all but said so. She shouldn’t trust his word alone, but what else did she have to lose?
The answer came to her, and her feet halted.
Danger and consequences lurked, waiting for the slightest misstep, yet the choice was clear.
She could stay and live unnoticed, but that would risk the innocent lives of unsuspecting humans on Prente and risk wiping them clean off the planet as her power became harder to control.
Or she could find the way Kaitos arrived and deliver herself into the clutches of whoever wanted her.
Resolve pushed the questions weighing her down, and she squared her shoulders.
Aela assessed her crystal supplies, food stores, and salt needed for the crossing, then packed for what she prayed to the Fates would be her last trek across the desert.
What more do I have to lose?