Chapter Six
Prismatic Power
Elloren Guryev
Shadow wasteland
“Portal out of here!”
I shout, striving to wave off our incoming forces to no avail, my screams swallowed by the mounting roar of Vogel’s forces battling to get through to us. Gray-fire explosions flash against our runic fire-shield with ever-increasing intensity, Yvan and Ariel fighting against the V’yexwraith with brute force.
While the leafy-cloth-wrapped Shadow Wand grows heavier in my hand as it continues to feed power into the ripening Void moons above.
The full nightmare of the situation hits like a fist to the gut as I’m flooded by the empathic sense of all my loved ones’ incoming magic—Trystan’s and Vothe’s, Sage’s and Soleiya’s, Sylvan’s, Yulan’s, Wrenfir’s, and everyone else’s as they soar through the sky portal, a multitude of winged kindreds flying in with them.
A knot of my allies swerve toward me, and Vang Troi and Hizar’drile land and immediately begin booming out orders. The bulk of our forces fans out and masses in front of my horde’s wall of Wyvernfire, Trystan, Vothe, Fain, and Sholindrile amongst them. Rafe, Diana, and the rest of our Lupine Dryad’khin dismount from eagleback and speed toward the V’yexwraith in a blur, along with Freyja, Valasca, and other Amaz, to aid Yvan and Ariel in battling the colossal demon.
Dryad of my heart! Raz’zor snarls to Oaklyyn through the horde bond.
Oaklyyn lets out a battle cry and launches herself toward Raz’zor’s Shadow tree–impaled form, while Sylvan, Iris, Bleddyn, and Alder, accompanied by several Lasair, including Soleiya, rush forward and set about freeing and healing Naga and our other impaled horde mates while I fight to keep hold of the increasingly leaden Shadow Wand.
Rafe, Diana, and Andras get to the V’yexwraith first, all of them joining Yvan and Ariel to leap at the V’yexwraith with vicious growls, claws slashing. Yvan strikes the demon to the ground, and it goes strangely limp, its form growing as transparent as a specter, my allies’ attacks passing right through it.
My eyes widen as the creature turns and fixes its multiple churning gray eyes on me, its Void tree blasting through my mind once more with painful force.
“Elloren!”
Gwynn and Mavrik call out.
I tear my gaze from the demon to find the twinned Dryad’kin sprinting toward me, their Agolith Flame Hawks winging in behind them. Rivyr’el, Ra’Ven, Sage, and Yulan and her heron, along with Jules and Lucretia and Jules’s Noi Kestrel are close on their heels.
“I have the Shadow Wand!”
I cry out to them.
The Void tree hammers into my mind with shattering force and I wince against the pain. It’s as if the wretched Wand wants to crack my skull apart and wrest itself from my grip, its increasing weight pulling my hand to the Shadowed earth while the magical tension of the orbs above us begins to feel like a thousand tightly wound springs, soon to be released to rain hell down on us all.
“The moons,”
I force out, gritting my teeth against the Void tree’s assault as my allies draw near. I gesture skyward. “They’re Shadow-iron explosives! They’re going to fall once they siphon up enough of our power!”
My fear notches higher as I’m overtaken by the sense of the orbs hooking into all the incoming allies’ magic with invisible Shadow tethers, latching tight. Threads of my Dryad’khin’s power begin to stream toward the evil orbs, graying as it goes.
Rivyr’el stiffens, staring up at the moons. “Well, that’s not good,”
he drawls.
“Portal us all back to the East, now!” I insist.
“We can’t,”
Sage counters, voice hard. “That portal will take hours to recharge for the return trip.”
“We have to stand our ground and fight,”
Lucretia grits out, her water aura being siphoned upward as she speaks.
“Fight fast,”
I urge as the roar of Vogel’s army beyond our shield intensifies, Yvan now standing sentry around the prone V’yexwraith with our allies, our larger force assembled just beyond them. “Vogel is dead,”
I inform my companions as the Wand weighs down my hand, “but his army is positioned just past our stormwall of Wyvernfire. A much bigger army than we can defeat with our power being siphoned away. And the Deathkin runes marked through our shield won’t hold it forever.”
“Can you get a reading on a way to defeat those moons?”
Sage asks Gwynn and Mavrik as my uncle Wrenfir, Marina, Gareth, and Thierren Stone join us, along with Alaric and Nerissa.
In answer, Mavrik and Gwynn take each other’s hands and thrust their branches toward the sky. Misty ropes of gold streak toward the moons and blast over the orbs’ surfaces in a flash of golden light that rapidly morphs to gray, their gilded power swiftly absorbed.
“We can’t destroy them,”
Mavrik grimly states as he lowers his branch, both his hawk and Gwynn’s agitatedly ruffling their feathers where they perch on their shoulders. “A Shadow-geomancy locking spell surrounds each of them.”
Gwynn nods, expression grave. “Only a Strafeling geomancer could destroy those moons before they fall.”
Frustration spikes through me. Or’myr. I need you, cousin. But you’re with Tierney, guarding the Vo. Leagues away . . .
The Void tree impales my mind once more, forcing a cry from my throat, the evil Wand in my hand bolting pain through my temples that’s so intense, my knees start to buckle. Wrenfir grips hold of my arm, steadying me, and I glare at the Shadow Wand, filled with the sense of it drawing up power for another mind attack, possibly strong enough to knock me unconscious.
“What is it, Elloren?”
Wrenfir insists.
“The Wand,”
I huff, gray streaking through my vision. “It’s attacking my mind—”
Color suddenly explodes through my sight, the vision of a prismatic tree materializing into being. The gray clears from my vision as the prismatic tree’s branches lock hold of the Void tree, the multihued tree’s chromatic light power flashing through my rootlines as the two trees begin to wage war, their limbs locking like buck antlers.
“The Verdyllion,”
Gwynn gasps, gesturing toward the Sublands to our north.
“It’s coming in beneath us,”
Mavrik finishes.
My sense of prismatic power intensifies, silver Wyvernfire wrapped around it. An image of the multicolored Verdyllion shimmers into my mind, superimposed over the prismatic tree.
The Shadow Wand’s Void tree sends an ear-splicing shriek through my skull, lashing gray branches against both the Verdyllion and its tree, as if seeking to beat the images into submission. Dazed, I glance down at my free hand and find glowing color streaking through my III mark at the same moment that my surrounding allies hold up their palms, revealing the same.
“Unshield these Sublands!”
Rivyr’el urges Gwynn and Mavrik. “While you still can!”
Wasting no time, they point their branches in the direction of the Verdyllion and murmur a spell in unison, wresting hold of what power they still can from the Void moons’ relentless pull.
A gigantic circle filled with golden runes blinks into being on the distant, Shadow-smoking earth, Vogel’s net of Shadow visible just under it, Mavrik and Gwynnifer’s multicolored net of shielding layered beneath both runic circle and Shadow net, the encircled portion of their shield rapidly shivering away.
Mavrik spits out a curse and exchanges a grim look with Gwynn.
“We’ve removed our Subland shielding,”
Gwynn tells us, sweat beading both her and Mavrik’s brows, “but we can’t get through Vogel’s!”
The Shadow Wand’s fury pours through me, the war raging inside my head ramping up to agonizing heights as the Void tree clamps its branches down around both the Verdyllion and its tree at the same moment our runic firewall holding back Vogel’s army explodes into gray steam along with its Deathkin runes.
A terrible, thundering roar goes up, and the sea of Vogel’s forces launches toward us by land and air, Vogel’s four pyrr-demons leading the charge and morphing out of their glamours to reveal their fiery forms, smoke horns and lower halves made of spiraling grayed flame. Our Dryad’khin army strengthens our defensive line, the Eastern Wyverns wresting hold of the last of their unsiphoned power to blast a shield-wall made of crackling white lightning into existence before them, gray-fire explosions detonating against it, the demons ramming solidifying horns into it, sparks flying as the white lightning begins to gray. Yvan and other allies fall in with our forces while Ariel and Andras remain behind to guard the prone V’yexwraith. Ra’Ven, Gareth, Thierren, Wrenfir, and Lucretia draw weapons and sprint out to join the incoming battle.
My stomach drops as I meet the misty V’yexwraith’s multitude of eyes, its great maw pulling into a sickening smile as it looks at the Wand in my hand, the siphoning pull of the demon’s moons intensifying as the lightning wall turns completely gray.
The specter-like V’yexwraith lets out a ratcheting, earsplitting laugh that cuts straight through the magical explosions of battle and echoes off the moons above as our final defense falls, horror fires through my every line and the Shadow army rushes at our forces—
—just as Gwynn and Mavrik’s runic circle flashes with starbright light.
Startled, I turn toward it as an explosion of silver-green fire bursts into being inside its expanse.
I blink at it, surprise wresting hold. Because I can sense it’s not just any fire.
It’s a world-bending inferno of Wyvernfire.
Vogel’s circle of Shadow net scorches away, and I flinch back as a green dragon blasts through the fire, leaves amassed on its wings, branches for horns, bright silver lightning crackling around its body.
The Verdyllion Wand-Stylus gripped in the dragon’s silvery talons.
The circle of fire gutters out, and a new battle roar rises as scores of Smaragdalfar soldiers and freed Wyverns stream from the runic Subland opening, all of them wielding emerald-glowing Varg weaponry.
The Smaragdalfar soldiers rush toward our forces as they blast out a huge line of suspended emerald runes.
The runes fly over us and slam down in front of the bulk of Vogel’s army, tenuously walling them off as our forces make quick work of those soldiers, dragons, and Shadow beasts remaining on our side of the Varg wall, while other Smaragdalfar conjure a compact Varg shield to contain the V’yexwraith and pyrr-demons.
The green dragon lands before me and rapidly contracts into a slender female figure, her leafy wings flashing with forking silver light, urgency crackling in her eyes.
“Wynter!”
I choke out, relief slashing through me that’s so staggering it feels like vertigo as the Void tree lets out a skull-rattling snarl through my mind.
Wynter is garbed in Smaragdalfar battle armor, her newly green-tinted face and form surrounded by a swirling, verdant aura—the same aura, I sense, that swirled around the Great Tree III. Her silver eyes are edged with starbright fire, and lightning horns rise from her alabaster hair, a translucent Watcher kindred perched on her shoulder.
The prismatic Verdyllion Wand-Stylus gripped in her hand.
Wynter’s blazing eyes immediately find first the Shadow Wand in my hand, then Ariel in dragon form, her eyes widening as she obviously recognizes Ariel’s lightning. Ariel is pacing near the V’yexwraith’s newly Varg-bound form as our collective power continues to diminish, the Void moons swiftly locking hold of the Smaragdalfar army’s power.
Their Varg wall rippling gray.
A shocked breath pulls through Wynter’s throat as her gaze darts from Ariel to the moons and back again, a streak of Wynter’s aura blazing fervidly out to encircle Ariel.
“Can you take out those moons with the Verdyllion?”
I press Wynter.
Before Wynter can answer, a severe-faced Smaragdalfar woman with a half-shaved head sprints toward us, Wynter’s now green-tinted brother, Cael, and his equally greened Second, Rhys, running in behind the woman along with a willowy, long-tressed Smaragdalfar woman and two young male Subland soldiers.
“Yyzz’ra!”
Mavrik calls to the severe-faced woman.
“Gather your light sorcerers around the Verdyllion Shard!”
Yyzz’ra bellows. “It needs seven lines of light! Now!”
Time seems to pause as my power empathy desperately searches for seven allies still holding on to some semblance of their light power. I can sense unbound reserves of light power remaining inside Wynter, Sage, Gwynn and Mavrik, Rivyr’el, Marina, and myself, everyone else’s light magic being swept into the Void moons, including every trace of Alaric’s and Nerissa’s powers.
“We only have six conduits of light power,”
I tell Yyzz’ra. “Gwynn and Mavrik’s magic flows as one.”
“You need seven to balance your magic and fully connect it to Oo’na’s Shard!”
Yyzz’ra insists.
The Zhilaan Forest tugs on my lines, pulling my attention inward as dark wings flash through my mind, a bud of prismatic color pulsing in my center.
“We have seven!”
I cry, lifting my free hand to cradle my abdomen. “I’m pregnant with a light sorcerer!”
Everyone’s eyes widen, surprise crackling through their remaining traces of power. Wasting no time, Wynter reaches for my free hand and I give it to her, her pale fingers closing in around mine as she reads both me and my spark of a child.
The silver Wyvernfire in Wynter’s eyes flashes brighter as she releases my hand and reverentially holds the Verdyllion out to me. “Your child is strongly anchored in both Forest power and every hue of light,”
she says. “The Verdyllion wants to return to you, Elloren.”
A vortex of urgency balling in my throat, I take hold of the Verdyllion’s spiraling, multicolored form, feeling the arc of my whole destiny cycling down, the arc of all our destinies cycling down, the Verdyllion’s prismatic tree expanding in my mind, holding firm against the Void.
Wynter holds out her hand. “Elloren,”
she says, the flame in her eyes blazing, “give me the Shadow Wand.”
I make no move to give it to her, suddenly overtaken by the realization that the Shadow Wand has ceased its attacks on my mind. It’s gone strangely silent and is now light in my hand, the sensation of a sly, siphoning line connecting its gray, spiraling form to the Void moons above taking hold.
My pulse skyrockets, and I yank the Shadow Wand farther away from Wynter to keep her from making contact with the evil tool as the Varg barriers flash a darker, all-encompassing gray. “Don’t touch it!”
I cry. “It wants to tether your magic to the Void moons and turn you into a creature of Shadow!”
“I have to touch it, Elloren,”
Wynter insists. “I need to link the Shadow Wand’s tethering Void tree with my empathy so we can take control of it.”
My mind races for some way to block the Shadow Wand’s siphoning power . . .
. . . and lights on a time that seems like a million years ago.
Tierney and I, in the Verpax University lab. Blocking magic with a distillate of concentrated Ironflower oil and vivid blue color.
My thoughts careen toward the stories in The Book of the Ancients—how the prophetess Galliana used Ironflowers to fight demonic power, the myths all converging in this moment . . .
My eyes swing toward Yulan. “We need Ironflowers. Can you latch hold of whatever remaining power you have to cover Wynter with them?”
A light sparks in Yulan’s eyes and she nods, the petite Dryad’s face tensing with an expression of great effort. She points her branch toward Wynter and wrests hold of the thread of power still under her control.
A flash of deep-blue light detonates around Wynter. Woven strands of glowing blue Ironflowers twine around her legs, torso, and arms, casting her in a penumbra of blue light.
Without further pause, Wynter holds out her hand for the Shadow Wand.
Pulse galloping, I hand it to her and she takes hold of the evil thing. Unwinding its leaf-cloth wrapping, she takes it directly in hand.
Wynter gasps and falls to her knees, her eyelids fluttering as the glow of the Ironflowers flash defensively bright, and I’m filled with the sense of her empathy touching down on the Shadow’s huge, branching Void tree.
Invisible Void branches knife toward Wynter’s core of silver fire but are stopped up short by the Ironflowers’ blue aura, which is weaving protection around her magic. A whirling gray mist briefly slashes around Wynter’s form with surging might, but it’s unable to penetrate the blue.
Her delicate jaw set tight, Wynter rises with what appears to be great effort, the Shadow Wand held doggedly tight in her fist.
“The Seven need to make contact with the Verdyllion,”
Wynter rasps out.
My allies huddle close, my heart pounding as I keep tight hold of the Verdyllion, and Marina, Sage, Gwynn, Mavrik, and Rivyr’el reach out to loop fingers around its spiraling form.
“Touch the Verdyllion to the Shadow Wand!”
Wynter vehemently prods as she joins us in looping a finger around the Verdyllion, completing the seven points of power.
The full prism of color explodes across my vision, brighter than ever before, the Verdyllion’s power coursing around us all in a rainbow spray of sparks.
Wynter drags the Shadow Wand’s tip toward the Verdyllion, and the Wand screams, its Void tree exploding into being inside me, impaling my mind with brutal force.
A cry escapes my lips, my legs buckling as Jules and Yulan grab hold of me and keep me upright, every color in the world around us pulsing to iron gray.
Heart hammering, I grit my teeth and fight through the pain as, together, we force the Verdyllion’s tip to the Shadow Wand’s.
The Wands make contact, and the V’yexwraith’s ratcheting shriek tears through both the air and my mind, the sound world-cleaving as I’m flooded with an empathic awareness of the Void tree’s entire branching network of control.
Monumentally strengthened.
“I can sense the Shadow’s linkage to every fasted Mage and Zalyn’or-controlled Alfsigr!”
Wynter cries.
“Connect them all to our Forest,”
Yulan urges as she and Jules keep hold of me, Yulan’s melodic voice shot through with the Forest’s own steel. “Connect them to the living trees.”
“More than that,”
Jules Kristian insists, his hand closing in around ours, around the Verdyllion, “connect them to the power of Erthia’s entire history.”
“And the power the Watchers have woven through it,”
Wynter rasps as the Watcher on her shoulder bursts into bright light that swirls around our hands.
Our lines and cores of power contract toward the Verdyllion, my lungs seizing as the Verdyllion pulls on our seven conduits of light power, Jules’s link to Erthia’s history, and the Watchers’ ethereal might, the Verdyllion’s power amplifying with the full force of III.
Light explodes through my vision once more as the Verdyllion’s amplified power whorls around the Shadow’s Void tree, coming close to breaking into its network of control before being stopped up short.
My urgency sliding toward desperation, I search for the weak link in our connection and quickly locate it.
The Verdyllion is unable to fully connect with the Zhilaan-anchored light power growing inside me.
The Verdyllion Wand flashes an image of Yvan through my mind at the same moment that every Varg barrier falls, and a cacophony of shrieks and roars rise, the Shadow army and its pyrr-demons launching into an attack of our frontline forces once more.
Alarm spikes as Yvan and the rest of my horde close in around us in a blur, facing outward, claws extended, the few sparks of Yvan’s power that remain under his control burning hot around our bond with the furious urge to protect.
Our eyes meet over my shoulder, his gaze a lethal green, alarmingly stripped of violet fire.
“Touch me!”
I urge Yvan. “The Verdyllion needs to connect with both of us to fully engage with our child!”
Without hesitation, Yvan embraces me from behind, his arms wrapping around my waist, his hot form pressed tight against my back. As if on instinct, he presses his heated lips to the half-moon mating mark on my shoulder’s upper edge, sparks igniting through my lines.
Wings strobe against my vision, the contact with him instantly amplifying our threefold link to Zhilaan power, the magic streaming out into the Verdyllion, like water through a burst dam.
A dazzling flash of prismatic light momentarily cuts out my vision as the Verdyllion draws on all seven lines of power along with a line of Zhilaan might and overtakes the giant Void tree, clamping down on gray limbs with renewed force, the Shadow branches withering beneath the onslaught of chromatic might. I shudder against Yvan as the Verdyllion wrests hold of the branching Void network, sending a prismatic link through every fastline and Zalyn’or necklace, forming a connection with every fasted Mage and every Zalyn’or-imprinted Alfsigr, flooding them all with the Forest’s message and history, the Watchers’ light swirling around it all . . .
. . . gifting everyone with an invitation to abandon the Shadow and join with the surviving Natural World.
As one, united Dryad’khin.
The sea of Mage and Marfoir soldiers still and fall to their knees, those on multilimbed Shadow dragons slumping down.
My vision clearing, I spot a Mage in the distance who resembles Damion Bane, but it’s difficult to know for certain, my attention drawn skyward as the airborne Shadow dragons and wraith bats are pulled to the ground and bound there by prismatic lines of power, along with scorpios, other Shadowed beasts, and the pyrr-demons, their screaming chorus of snarls a transient disturbance as chromatic energy wraps around their mouths, the roar of battle vanishing.
“Stand down!”
Vang Troi booms out to our forces, her voice echoing out across the Shadowed land’s expanse.
A weighted silence descends, my heart drumming against my chest.
The V’yexwraith’s screeching laugh bursts forth, echoing across the smoking wasteland and up to the sea of moons.
My gaze snaps skyward as the moons abruptly burgeon then blink to midnight gray, darkness swallowing the world, even the glow of Wynter’s Ironflowers dimming as the moons surge with power.
A swoop of light-headed horror threatens to overwhelm me.
The moons . . . they’re about to kill us all. And then, the V’yexwraith will rise and retake the Shadow Wand, wielding it to siphon every remaining speck of Life from Erthia.
My horror careens into defiant, white-hot fury.
“NO!”
I scream as I force the Verdyllion toward the heavens, pulling everyone’s grips on it with my motion, as I blast what’s left of our merged power toward the moons.
A sky-flashing bolt of our prismatic light power detonates, spearing upward to glance harmlessly off the orbs before the moons’ gray darkness overtakes the world once more, our remaining magic siphoned out of our grasp to flow up toward the moons.
“Holy gods,”
Gwynn stammers as my allies release their hold on the Verdyllion and panic threatens to choke me.
Yvan’s embrace around my trembling form tightens. “I love you, Elloren,”
he says against my cheek, his tone shot through with defiance as he slides his hand down over my womb. “I will love you forever.”
“I love you too,”
I say through my pooling tears, grief splintering my voice as dark wings gently flutter through my mind and Yvan and I send a blaze of love to our Icaral Light Mage child.
Our child who will never see the light of day.
“Yvan! Elloren!”
Soleiya cries over the distance between us as the moons’ attack magic fully snaps into place and I flinch, my hand closing around Yvan’s wrist.
“I love you,”
Yvan cries out to his mother, as the moons fall, a cry escaping me as they rapidly enlarge to terrifying size. Holding desperately tight to Yvan’s strong arms, I tremble against him, bracing myself for impact.
A sudden earthquake rumbles to life, the ground beneath my feet shaking, my balance giving way.
Yvan abruptly takes flight, lifting us just off the ground as my allies are knocked off their feet, a great fissure forming beside the V’yexwraith, a magnificent purple light raying up from its depths in brilliant purple rays.
The huge demon screams against the sudden color-assault, which feels like a pulse of powerful geomancy.
Strafeling-level geomancy.
The purple light fills the sky and wraps around the moons, bringing them to a screeching halt only a few handspans above us.
I gasp, the ground continuing to shiver as the moons slowly recede upward, all of them taking on a bright violet glow as they’re filled with the incoming geopower.
Appearing now like a sky full of Xishlon moons.
“It’s geomancy,”
I rasp to Yvan as the V’yexwraith lets out a bloodcurdling shriek and teeters, cracks beginning to appear all over its solidifying and crystallizing form, its huge body shot through with reflected violet color as the ground continues to shake.
A bolt of what looks like purple crystal spears up from the fissure and rapidly expands into a huge, crystalline tree. My eyes widen as a smaller explosion of violet light detonates along the violet geo-tree’s base, forming a passage.
Sparrow Trillium steps out. She’s gripping a purple stylus in her hand, a diffuse halo of violet energy surrounding her body—the telltale aura of an Urisk Strafeling.
Erthia’s most powerful class of geomancer.
“Sparrow!”
Thierren cries as she thrusts her geo-stylus toward the V’yexwraith and calls out an Urisk spell.
A bolt of pure purple light blasts from her stylus and into the demon.
The V’yexwraith lets out a ground-vibrating scream, its violet glow heightening as its limbs flail and its body begins to crack apart.
“You’ll never be rid of me!”
the V’yexwraith screeches as Sparrow angles her stylus down, another fissure opening in the earth beneath the demon. “I will re-form around your conflicts and CONSUME EVERYTHING!”
the demon shrieks before its fragmenting body drops into the crevice.
As it falls, I’m hit by the sensation of the demon’s poisonous essence streaming back into the Shadow Wand gripped in Wynter’s hand, a shiver coursing through me.
Sparrow looks to the sky and slashes her amethyst stylus upward.
The suspended moons liquefy into a suspended sea of molten purple before Sparrow swipes the amethyst down toward the fissure she’s just crafted.
The purple sea follows her motion, waterfalling into the fissure’s abyss before Sparrow murmurs another Urisk spell and the ground closes up and stops shaking, the moons now gone from the Shadow-poisoned sky as Yvan’s magic and mine surge and snap back under our control.
Yvan lands, and my feet touch ground, a cry of stunned relief bursting from me as I catch sight of Rafe and Trystan, Diana, Aislinn, and so many other loved ones.
Still alive . . . all of us still alive.
Euphoria surging through me, I whirl around, and Yvan sweeps me into an embrace, the two of us clutching each other, his hot lips now pressed to my temple, his tears warm against my cheek. “My love,”
he hisses in Wyvern. “My beautiful, Dryad love.”
My hand slides between us and over my womb, my own tears suddenly falling.
We’ll live. We’ll live to meet our child.
After a moment, I step back from Yvan and turn to face the Forest-linked Mages and smatterings of Marfoir Elves, Verdyllion in hand. They’re all still down on their knees, eyes closed.
So many Mages.
A stunned shock rolls through me, an upsurge of grief close on its heels as I take in the poisoned landscape all around us and our scattered dead at the front lines, my blood beginning to boil as anger rises like a tide.
They did this.
The Mages did this.
“Elloren,”
Yvan says, a cautionary weight to his tone that I ignore as power floods me—Black Witch power. I step toward Vogel’s forces, overwhelmed by the vicious Black Witch urge to slay them all and watch them burn.
To make every last Mage pay.
Ignoring Yvan’s cautioning flow of fire, I draw up magic, knowing I now hold enough Zhilaan-fortified power to incinerate them all.
The Verdyllion tingles against my palm, its urgent energy halting my steps.
A flash of verdant color blasts over the sea of Mages and Marfoir, and I startle, surprise coursing through Yvan’s and my restored fire as the vast majority of Vogel’s Mage soldiers take on a deep, Dryad-green shimmer and the Marfoir transform back into Alfsigr men, their salt-white hue gaining a greenish tint, the bound Shadow creatures falling into gray dust.
A flash of the Verdyllion’s light shocks through me, and the scene before me cuts out.
I’m overtaken by visions of my entire story, from my first sighting of a Watcher in Halfix to my time at Verpax University, initially mistrusting every non-Mage . . . to where I stand right now.
In a split second, I relive it all.
The Verdyllion shifts the vision, images flashing through my mind of what I might have been, had I cast Ariel out when I had the chance, had my uncle Edwin not hidden my power from the Magedom, had I not listened and learned from my former adversaries who are now my allies.
Including a rebellious Icaral who became the father of my spark of a child.
Pain courses through me, remorse shearing through my heart. Because I know what I might have been had I chosen differently.
I’d be one of the Mages massed before us.
But I wouldn’t be down on my knees, listening to the Forest.
I’d stand at their gray, leading edge, the Shadow Wand clutched in my hand.
And I wouldn’t have needed Vogel’s control to put me there.
With one inescapable bolt of reckoning, I’m struck by the realization that we all hold the possibility of being drawn to the Shadow or the Verdyllion. We all hold both the pull toward hatred and cruel fracture and the opposing pull toward the loving, unifying path of the Watchers deep inside us.
And it’s up to each of us to choose which pull to follow.
Trembling and painfully chastened, I lower the Verdyllion at the same moment Ariel, morphed into Icaral form, takes to the sky and arrows toward Wynter while Thierren sprints toward Sparrow.
I scan the Mages, distantly registering that the Mage who seemed to resemble Damion is nowhere in sight as our forces set about taking those few Mages who haven’t joined with the Forest into military custody.
“Dryad’kin!”
Sylvan shouts as he runs toward the opening to the Sublands.
My empathy picks up a sizable mass of depleted Dryads sheltering just beneath us, Alder and Oaklyyn rushing toward the opening as well, as Dryads begin to filter out of it. Yulan pauses to lash out a bolt of sapphire power at the bound pyrr-demons, the creatures shrieking as Ironflowers suddenly wind around them and the demons sizzle away to gray stream.
Dazed, I watch the Dryads embrace their kin and Thierren and Sparrow fall into each other’s arms, their powers swirling around each other with ardent force, while Ariel zooms in and lands in front of Wynter, dropping to one knee before her, her horned head lowering in supplication, wings fanning out.
“My beloved one,”
Ariel says, in a clearer voice than I’ve ever heard from her. “Ealaiontora of Alfsigroth and Dryad’khin warrior. I give myself up to you as your Second. To protect you and ally with you. Forever.”
Tears spill from Wynter’s silver-fire eyes as she tears a strip of cloth from the emerald tunic under her armor and carefully wraps the Shadow Wand in the fabric then slides it into her tunic’s pocket, only a trace of the Shadow Wand’s power remaining. Wynter then lowers herself to Ariel’s level and cups her face in her hands. “No, my beloved one,”
she says, her voice suffused with affection. “You are not my Second. You are my Great Love. My Forever Love.”
Ariel’s head rises, moisture sheening her gold-fire eyes. She chokes out a strangled sound of emotion before she and Wynter pull each other into an embrace, then into an impassioned kiss. Emotion tightens my heart as they burst into gold and silver-green flame, love burning bright in it.
And then the flames die down and Wynter rises and steps back, the Ironflowers singed away. Silvery lightning limns the edges of Wynter’s branch wings, and a beatific smile lifts her lips as she holds out her hand to Ariel. Ariel takes it and rises, as well.
As the surrounding Mages and Alfsigr awaken.
Appearing dazed, the Mages feel the points on their ears and stare at their hands, clearly marveling at their skin’s heightened green glow and the absence of fastlines around their hands and wrists. The Alfsigr Elf soldiers look around blankly, seeming stunned by the sudden freeing of their minds from the Zalyn’or’s cruel hold, all of them—the whole sea of them—seeming shocked into silence. And then, as one, they all look to us.
Almost every single Mage and Alfsigr holds up a III-marked palm, pain slashed across their faces. And remorse. Fierce remorse.
Remorse I feel burning in my own chest, tears stinging my eyes.
I meet the green gaze of one of the Mages kneeling only a few paces away, and realize I know him—Curren Dell, a fellow Mage scholar at Verpax University who was kind to me what seems like years ago.
“Elloren,”
he stammers. “The Forest showed us . . . everything.”
I nod through my tears. Complicated tears. Because Curren willingly gave himself up to be part of this nightmare.
“Shane!”
Sage cries, rushing over the battlefield to her older brother. They fall into each other’s arms, sobbing, other allies calling out to transformed Mages and Alfsigr.
Curren blinks at the Shadow-destroyed land, a tortured look in his eyes, as if he’s remembering everything the Forest likely showed him. Tears slip down his cheeks as he meets my gaze once more with a stricken look of horror. “What have we done?” he rasps.
The same expression appears on almost every Mage and Alfsigr face, all of them in the process of waking up from a decades-long nightmare—a nightmare that might have permanently destroyed Erthia.
Watchers blink into view, perched on the shoulders of every Dryad’khin, including the newly III-bonded Mages and Alfsigr, and a collective gasp rises.
“Do you see them?”
I breathe out to Yvan.
His hand comes to my shoulder, as Wynter and the others close in around us and I glance at the Watcher on my own shoulder, then his.
Yvan and Wynter nod, an astonished look on Yvan’s face as he takes in the ethereal birds, the Watchers’ message clear—
Align.
The Watchers blink out of sight, and the Verdyllion’s prismatic energy gives a pull toward Wynter.
I hold the glowing Wand out to her. “It wants to return to you.
“What can the Verdyllion do?”
I ask her as she takes reverent hold of it, wanting to know, once and for all, what this Wand-Stylus I thought was so weak is truly capable of.
“It can break bonds,”
Wynter answers. “It can link magic for the good. Create connections and portals via the path of love. And work to restore the Balance. Its power . . . it amplifies as more of us join with the power of Life.”
Wynter breathes in deeply as she hugs the Verdyllion to her chest and closes her eyes, her green-tinted brow knotting. “I can sense a portion of its amplified magic breaking free.”
She opens her eyes, meeting my gaze with a look of astonishment then determination as she murmurs several spells and thrusts the Wand upward.
Light rays out in every direction, a tingle racing down my spine.
“It sent me images of a large flow of Mages and Alfsigr . . .”
Wynter falteringly says “. . . and others . . . fleeing from the Shadow destruction and famine in the Western Realm. The Verdyllion . . . it’s using our light power to conjure portals as we speak, to help the Mages and Alfsigr and other survivors in the West flee to the East. Including those trapped on the Fae and Pyrran Islands.”
“We need to aid everyone escaping from those islands,”
Sparrow says as she and Thierren approach, hand in hand, Sparrow’s violet Strafeling aura intensifying with an urgent glow, and I remember that she and Effrey were once imprisoned on the Fae Islands.
“I agree,”
Thierren seconds, exchanging a decisive look with her.
I sense a pulse of gray stirring inside the Shadow Wand in Wynter’s pocket, and my every nerve springs alert.
“Wynter,”
I caution. “The Shadow Wand . . .”
Wynter slides her hand toward her pocket, a stark expression tightening her gaze as she makes a sliver of contact with the evil thing’s hilt. “The Shadow Wand is waiting to renew its power,”
she warns, “from the discord this huge migration of people will bring.”
Yvan’s power blazes to hotter life through our bond. “Which means we need to go east quickly to try to head off that conflict.”
I glance warily at Wynter’s pocket where the Shadow Wand is stirring. “The cycle of fracture throughout history has to end now,”
I agree as I lift my gaze to meet Wynter’s, gesturing toward the Shadow tool. “What can we do to subdue that Wand?”
Wynter tilts her head, her finger still touching the Shadow Wand’s hilt as she reads it once more. “We can’t destroy it outright. We can keep its power at bay only by being something much greater than we have ever been. Together.”
“Which means we need to unite the surviving people of Erthia,”
Jules says from beside Lucretia, giving me a meaningful look, “messy as that might prove to be.”
I glance around at the transformed Mages and Alfsigr, my gaze zeroing in on my Mage Dryad’kin, realizing, in a flash of emotion, that my prophesied role as the Black Witch was true all along. Yes, part of my task was to help take down Vogel and his Shadow. But I can sense the call to lead my people out of the horror we all became.
Alfsigr voices rise, calling out to Wynter in their language, “Ealaiontora”
echoing again and again as they emphatically make a sign on their chests that has the feel of an Alfsigr religious symbol.
Wynter fans out her wings, Ariel staunchly beside her, and looks lovingly toward her people. She raises her hand and flicks out a finger, and a suspended silver amplification rune blinks into existence before her.
“I speak as your Ealaiontora,”
she calls out, her voice like a bell, reverberating over the Shadowed wasteland. “The Shining Ones are calling us onto the path of united Dryad’khin. It is time to cast off the Zalyn’or’s lies of division and take our place as what we must all become—Guardians of Erthia’s Balance and Guardians of all Erthia’s children.”
And then Wynter turns, lifts the Verdyllion, and blasts out a line of runic portals, all of them a glowing prism-edged green.
III green.
Wynter hands the Verdyllion back to me, a slight, emotional smile on her lips.
I hesitate, then take hold of the ever-living Wand once more. Its spiraling form feels so right as my fingers wrap around it. Like a circle finally closing. I straighten and look out at all the Mages. And all the Alfsigr. At everyone.
Stepping forward, I feel myself rising, finally, as the true Black Witch. But not as some central figure in this story. Because it’s clear this fight requires not just me, but every one of us to rise as restorers of the Balance.
So, instead, I rise as a messenger and catalyst amongst many, many messengers and catalysts, each of us ready to lose everything so that others won’t have to.
So that the children of Erthia won’t have to.
“Dryad’khin,”
I say, looking to all my Tree’khin as I gesture with the Verdyllion toward the line of portals. “We need to go to the East as one unified Tree’khin.”
I glance at the Shadow-destroyed sky and land, pain lancing through my heart. “And work to save our world together.”