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“The tails were particularly lucrative. They can wrap them around branches for balance. They were said to increase, um, male potency.” He mumbled the last few words. She grinned at his discomfort. “Does it work?” “I would not know,” he said, his back ramrod straight.
Lexi looked up and gave an involuntary shriek at the sight of ten vulture-sized birds diving in a spiral from the canopy some eighty meters above, descending upon them from all directions, wings slapping the air, shiny green and brown feathers quivering, their staccato screeches raising the hair on the back of her neck.
On extended legs the width of Lexi’s wrist, outspread talons came closer, and closer, seemingly in slow motion. Close enough for Lexi to notice that the creatures had T-rex-like arms in addition to their legs and wings, and their beaks weren’t beaks but mouths with rows of jagged teeth. They were more winged dinosaur than bird.
“The prophecy does not state whether either or both of you survive. ’Tis possible that the friendship itself is the key to victory, that once you and he establish a friendship, your survival may no longer be necessary. Fate would have been set in motion.”
“Enter the cursed temple that nobody except elf lords has ever left alive? Sure, why not. What could possibly go wrong?”
Aeric gave a long exhale, squared his shoulders, and conjured a ball of flame in the palm of his hand. It always amazed her that doing so never burned him. Then again, he’d once told her that he’d never suffered a burn in his life, not even a mild one. The firelight flickered through the shadows and danced off the walls, ducking in and out of intricately carved scenes of elves and nature.
By the way Taron smiled, Lexi had the feeling he’d been thinking this all along. He clapped his large hands together. “’Tis settled. South, to fire.” “Are you coming with us?” Lexi’s heart leapt at the possibility. “Not at this time. I am required elsewhere.” Splat. That was the sound of her heart hitting the ground.
“Lexi, Prince Aeric, trust your intuition. Trust your magic. Most of all, trust each other.”
Aeric’s lingering touch on the hilt of his sword was akin to a caress. You can take the prince out of the army, but you can’t take the soldier out of the prince.
Lexi closed her eyes to visualize manipulating the air around her, imagining it as river currents, as ribbons of intangible silk, rippling and flowing and lifting and pulling. She felt her feet leave the ground and the breeze stir her hair. When she opened her eyes, she was over open water. She faltered for a moment, certain she saw ominous dark shapes down there, but righted herself again. This is fun, she told herself. You’re having fun. Really, you are.
On three, they reached inside. Aeric’s flame provided enough light for them to see a circular platform seemingly floating in the nothingness below, too far down for them to safely drop. He groaned and met Lexi’s eyes. “Blood,” he said, letting the flame die. “Bloody hell,” she replied.
With a flick of his wrist, the ball of fire floated into the darkness. “That’s new,” she said. One by one, a series of torches set into the crater wall caught fire, spiraling downwards as the platform sunk into the depths.
The interior of the volcano took Lexi’s breath away. The descent took several minutes, and in that time she saw stones in every color of the rainbow, sparkling and dancing with an iridescent gleam like gasoline on the surface of a puddle.
“The world is a living thing, you see. Created by the Mother, Ayanella. Vessels carry its life force—aether—just as our veins carry blood. When the Mother senses a wound to nature, she cries over the world-creature’s pain and sends aether through its vessels, to heal and soothe it. What we see as lightning is aether illuminating the veins of the world.”
At first, the cave looked and felt like any of the dozens she’d seen since her arrival in Gowerland. The same bare walls, uneven surfaces. The same sharp, metallic scent with a hint of dampness. But when the last of their group entered, Lexi realized that this, too, had been an illusion. The size of the cave quadrupled. Paintings and runes revealed themselves on what had been bare stone. Torches flickered along the walls, leading to the back of the cave where Lexi could see the opening to a tunnel. “Holy crap.” She turned in a circle, taking it all in.
The guy was frustrating. Confusing. Hard to read. Touchy and moody. So why did she like him so much? Why was his happiness so important to her? Perhaps because he could also be funny, playful, affectionate. And he was brave to a fault. But was that enough?
As Lexi listened to this, she wondered what makes a person irredeemable, their actions unforgiveable. For someone like Aeric, who had been raised in a culture with a set of beliefs that had led to terrible things, who had never been confronted with the truth until recently, could past actions—and inactions—be forgiven? What about the other kids within the Schoolchildren system, Gowerland’s version of the Hitler Youth?
At what point did a person’s past actions and beliefs define their entire existence, be it for good or evil? If someone was kind, compassionate, honest, and generous for most of their life but had also committed acts that were anything but, did that negate all their good and define them as bad? Was it black or white like that? What if they spent the rest of their lives trying to make up for it? Once you did something immoral or wrong, did that make you a bad person overall, permanently stained by your past, and there was nothing you could do about it?
Or was redeemability like a scale, with good acts on one side and bad acts on the other, and whichever side outweighs the other defines the person overall, for eternity?
Selith crystals served as status symbols in addition to granting the Selenites the ability to use magic. The larger and more numerous crystals one had, the higher up in society the dark elf was. These two men wore fewer and smaller crystals than the woman, suggesting she was of higher rank and importance. Quite a bit higher. In addition to her necklace, she was blinged out with six large rings and several bracelets made entirely of the sparkling violet crystals.
Without warning, Lexi was hit with the sensation of being caught in the world’s biggest vacuum while being simultaneously stretched like an elastic and turned inside-out, then stomped on for good measure. It ended as suddenly as it had begun, with the thud of their feet landing on hard ground.
“You are nothing more than a glorified peasant. Were it not for your obsequious nature you would be shoveling shit in the royal stables rather than holding such an authoritative position. I, however, am the crown prince. You should be on your knees.”
A moose of a man, easily as tall as Lord Taron, his broad chest adorned with medals, strode straight towards Aeric’s cell. With his hands clasped behind his back and silence in his wake, the man stood with a wide stance and stared at Aeric, looked him up and down, his expression inscrutable.
Lexi turned her focus back to King Ulric. Perched on his coffee-brown hair was a golden crown with evenly spaced points that were fashioned to look like flames and a gold and ruby phoenix that rose above his forehead. King Ulric’s short, neat beard that was barely more than a scruff accentuated his strong chin, and his green eyes shone like dew-covered moss. Lexi had expected him to be wearing a robe or perhaps a suit of armor. Instead, he wore a red tunic over a long-sleeved black shirt, both of which bore gold embroidery and beadwork. When he stood, the tunic reached halfway down the thighs
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“The cost of freedom is all too often bloodshed and death, and that price is no fault of yours.”
She also didn’t have time for fear. Not from the shouts of fury she could hear, or the screams of pain and grief, or the smell of smoke and blood. Not at the sight of bloodied bodies scattered around the courtyard. And most certainly not when a broad swipe of Grobin’s sword knocked aside a dagger that would have embedded itself in her chest before she even saw it coming.
