Chapter 27 #2
Before long, Neris and I are sitting around the fire, shoveling savory brown broth from the mutton stew into our mouths as the travelers take turns telling stories.
I can’t help but think what we’re doing is foolish, but as I’m about to try convincing Neris to leave, an emaciated lad stands in front of the roaring fire and begins a tale in a surprisingly deep voice.
“In the days before the release of the Underling Prince, the Enchantress Queen, Enidwen, gathered followers from far and wide. One by one, Dreamwalkers, Healers, Sorcerers, and Wielders—especially the Flame and Shadow Wielders—signed their souls away to Enidwen. Days later, the enchantress would unwittingly relinquish her own soul to the Underling Prince. When chaos bled into Enidwen’s being, so too were her followers tainted.
“Darkness encroached on the followers, and they found themselves bound to and by the shadows.
Few embraced their newfound powers, honing them, learning to hide within the same darkness that threatened to pull them under.
The shadows emanated from within them, slithering along their skin, blackening their veins, as though wiping away their humanity.
They flirted with death and manipulated mankind; they bent reality and brought terror upon the realm.
Feared and revered, they became known as the Basduunai. Death bringers.
“Even after Enidwen was vanquished by the Heirs, the Basduunai continued their reign of terror. Some say they still walk among us, stalking us in our shadows, hiding within the umbrella of the full moon. Some say they haunt our dreams, waiting for a moment of weakness to take over our minds, to bring madness upon us, to compel us with puppet mastery. They lie in wait, patiently, to rise from the darkness and revive Enidwen’s mission. Some say they seek to awaken chaos—”
A high-pitched whistling sound followed by a nauseating squelch fills the air as a bolt lodges itself in the young man’s stomach. Screams resound and everyone tries to flee … in vain. My eyes fixate on the storyteller, his lifeblood seeping into the earth below.
A cold shiver runs through me, and I swear I see that damn tattered, grey cloak again.
There’s an echo of laughter, and my head whips toward it—toward a pair of red eyes glowing between the trees and the sensation of heat kissing my face. The scene before me disappears, replaced by a form cloaked in black, wielding a flaming axe.
She strolls through the blood-soaked forest. Past Neris, facedown. Dead. All the travelers. The Peacekeepers.
Call to me and spare your friends this fate, a voice says. Choose the Forge. Choose Fury. Fight with me and I will smite the Purists that dared to shatter your soul.
A blast of heat hits me until another voice speaks from elsewhere, sending ice skittering across my skin. Her voice rattles like bones in a bag. Resist. Run.
“Winnie, get up, dammit! What is wrong with you?” Neris shouts over the commotion as Peacekeepers apprehend several of the travelers. I’m back in the forest, a blur of black militia uniforms attacking the civilians.
No voices. No signs of red eyes or cloaked figures. My entire body shakes, my legs leaden. But Neris tugs me away from the horrifying sight, from the screams of fear. From death.
Why am I always running from death?
Why do these visions choose the worst possible times to plague me?
Our feet pound against the forest ground as we run.
Another high-pitched whistle sounds behind us only to end with a dull thud. My heart leaps, but neither of us has been hit.
There’s a flash of white ahead as someone steps out from behind a tree and into our path.
My foot catches on a branch, and my ankle twists for the second time in recent months.
I bite back a whimper of pain and manage to keep to my feet, hopping on one foot as I back away from the stranger.
Grey hair peeks out from beneath their hood, sending my heart into triple time.
A hand reaches out to me with a black stone set in a silver ring.
“Hurry,” the figure urges. She shakes her hand for emphasis.
I step back and wince, and Neris grabs my arm as I regain my balance. “What makes you think we’ll trust you, old hag?” she asks.
“It’s either that or meet your untimely death at the hands of Peacekeepers. The gods are at play here tonight too, it seems.”
Another chill runs through me. The gods? Right …
I grab Neris’s hand, holding it in a vise-like grip as she tries to pull away. “Winnie, you can’t be—”
But before she can finish her sentence, I grasp the woman’s waiting hand, and we’re immediately sucked into a void.
We’re weightless, being tugged and pushed, hurtled through the shadows.
Once our feet hit solid ground again, I close my eyes and focus on steadying my breath.
Neris retches, and my own stomach twists, but the old woman looks unfazed.
We’re inside what appears to be a workshop of sorts with rickety shelves of jars, dried herbs, and colorful bottles that seem luminescent in the dark interior.
I know this place.
My gaze flicks back to the woman in white. “Radika?” I exclaim.
She holds a finger to her lips.
“Since when are you a Purist?”
She lowers her white hood and smooths her weathered hands over her hair. “That is neither here nor there. Now let me see your foot.” She plops herself onto a tall stool and pats her lap.
“My foot?”
Radika mutters something in another tongue and snaps her fingers.
By some invisible force, my foot is tugged up onto her lap.
I struggle to maintain my balance, but Neris steadies me, her eyes wide.
As Radika unlaces my boot, I wince from the sharp pain.
Before I can ask her what she’s about to do, my boot thuds to the ground, and her hands envelop my throbbing ankle.
Lilac light surrounds her hand, sending tingles into my ankle before the pain dies down.
“You’re—”
“Some say Sorceress, I say Healer.” She smiles and pats my leg. I lower it and collect my boot from the floor. Radika silently regards me as I stand again, my boot relaced.
At last, she speaks up, “You will, someday soon, cross paths with the daughter of Dusk. Whether indirectly, or directly, the gods weren’t clear.”
My lips part to object.
“Yes, yes, you lost faith in the gods after the Cleanse, but that doesn’t change your part in all of this. You will have a choice. It won’t be easy.”
“A choice?”
“You already faced one tonight. Didn’t you?” She gives me a knowing look, and I visibly shudder as I think of glowing red eyes and flaming axes, and then of the other presence like winter in the middle of summer.
“Things are never as they seem at first, Gwyneth,” says Radika.
“But you’re intelligent.” She gets up and rushes off to the leather chest on her table, where she pulls out a few satchels that clink as she moves.
“No more acting out of fear.” She lifts two of the satchels and holds them out to me.
Then to Neris, she holds out the third. “And you, no acting out of impulse. You’re equally important. Equally unique and powerful.”
Neris huffs. “I wish,” she says.
“It doesn’t take magic to make a person powerful.” She inhales deeply, her chest expanding. With a huge sigh, her shoulders droop. “Love and friendship are just as strong.”
Neris and I exchange confused looks.
“Listen, children, I have to disappear for a while, but those vials should hold you over for now.”
The pouch in my hand does feel a little heavier than usual.
Radika absentmindedly spins the ring on her finger as she stares down at the floor.
None of this makes sense. How can Radika be a Purist and a practicing Sorceress? All Purists of higher stations wear vanishing rings, like the one Radika fiddles with. They justify this particular use of magic by saying that the stones are of natural origin—mined from an enchanted cavern.
The Purists are against magic except for when it suits them.
Some are Oracles, others are Healers, some even possess mind magic, but never sorcery.
Sorcerers can potentially Wield elements depending on their skills and use of spells; it’s too close to elemental Wielders like me, who are an abomination in their eyes.
“It’s not just Purists who own vanishing rings,” Radika says as though she’s heard my thoughts.
I meet her dark gaze. “Then which group do you identify with?”
“None, dear girl.” She grabs my shoulder, then Neris’s, steering us toward the door. “Things will get worse before they get better, but have faith. That calling you feel, you’ll eventually have to follow it.”
“Calling?” My forehead scrunches.
“You will know when the time comes.” With those last words, she shoves us out of her workshop and slams the door shut.
I spin back around, knocking on the door. “Radika, wait!” When she doesn’t respond, I turn the knob and, to my surprise, the door opens. But inside, the workshop is empty. No shelves, no potions, not even that odd light that often flickers in the ceiling. It’s as if none of it has ever existed.
“Let’s get home before more Peacekeepers come around or something even stranger happens,” says Neris, wide eyes on the empty room.
I nod and slip my hand into my pocket, wrapping my palm around my pocket watch. My head spins from everything that’s happened tonight. The visions, the travelers dead or dying. Radika, a living, breathing Sorceress.
I have a choice to make? A calling?
What I’d really like is an answer.