Alaric stared into the forest and gulped. The air around him hummed with tension at the sight of the woods before them. The change that made him waver wasn’t noticeable even with magic enhancing his eyes… and yet, Alaric felt his feet go heavy and his heart sank.
This wasn’t the same forest his friends played in. His instincts told him the woods weren’t as safe as they’d always been. Embedded deep into the space surrounding the woods was an insidious spell that made his stomach twist.
Most of the trees in the forest were allowed to grow wild while others were planted manually, mixing them with the natural trees mainly for the purpose of maintaining an emergency supply of timber and firewood during times when demon sightings were higher than normal.
[ Back when Jared died, the forest was nearly cut down to half its size ] Alaric mentally mumbled.
[ Yes… I remember. ] Alia responded in his mind, not sparing the boy a glance from her place at the front of the group.
Jared’s death was perhaps one of the most chilling events in the history of the Five Hills, accounting for the biggest number of human-planted trees in the forest currently.
“You okay?” LionHeart snapped the boy out of his thoughts.
Alaric nodded, then stared at his shaking hands. ‘Why am I afraid? I’ve been here plenty of times.’
“You have sharp senses,” LionHeart nodded with a grin of approval.
“How so?”
Before the man could answer, Sister Marla’s voice cut him off, “Stay close everyone. I’ve activated the forest’s defences.”
“Defenses?!” Alaric mused. Was that what was making his hair stand on end? And what kind of forest had defences? It made no sense for a forest inside a Holy Barrier to have… defences. The boy’s thoughts were swarming so fast that the time it took Sister Marla to respond felt slower than usual.
[ The forest has had defences for a long time. Didn’t you hear the words Marla used to activate them? ] the green-eyed boy swallowed.
He vaguely remembered the woman mumbling something in the ancient tongue but he hadn’t bothered to listen or even translate them based on his limited knowledge of the Old Tongue.
“That was an activation spell, wasn’t it? These defences have been here a while,” Darla whispered.
Alaric’s eyebrow twitched and his mind went on pause. Considering she’d only recently awakened her guardian, Darla was in no means skilled in magic. Aether Manipulation was only possible once one’s guardian had awakened.
Granted there were exceptions like Cody but Darla was not one of those exceptions. All Alaric was trying to understand was where a girl who’d never had access to aether—and thus no real use for magic—had gotten the time to cram the syllables of an ancient language into her mind without the aether to practice with.
Alaric’s mental fuming session was cut short by a light chuckle resounding in his mind, [ I’ll let it slide for now but when we’re done with the Ritual, you’ll recite all thirteen Constellations of the Old Tongue as well as their derivatives just like I taught you.
Alaric shivered… ‘Great.’
“Am right, aren’t I?” Darla reiterated.
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Alaric responded with a light nod, “That’s impressive. Why does the forest need defences though? It’s inside the Holy Barrier. No demon’s coming in here… and I think I’d actually like to see a thief try to steal a tree.”
Chuckles rippled among the men while Sister Marla shook her head before explaining, “The forest is enchanted to protect our aspirants during this time. Anyone that tries to follow us in will lose their sense of direction and either get lost in the forest forever or wind up going back the way they came.”
Alaric nodded…
The towering black knight’s voice suddenly rumbled, “That won’t be enough to protect Alaric.”
The air was tense for a moment before Sister Marla asked the towering knight, “What more would you have us do, Alia?”
“Put up four Magic Barriers layered on top of each other. The Containment type. If they cover the whole village, they will be able to withstand the pressure of the aether better,” the Guardian explained.
“Isn’t that something they do for Metal and Stone Tempering Rituals?” Gunther asked.
“Wait, such a thing exists?! I thought the old Seekers at the Tower were messing around,” LionHeart’s eyes widened.
“Oh, it’s real. They say the Tempering Ritual of Stone and Metal Ranks can be so violent that the place literally turns into a Wild Aether Zone. The stories the old geezers have let me read are wild,” Gunther narrated.
“Alia, is all that they say true?” Sister Marla asked in a cold tone.
The knight nodded, “Almost.”
“What happens to the people of the Five Hills then? There is a reason humans don’t live inside of Wild Aether Zones,” the woman replied.
“It won’t be as bad… but that’s the problem. From what I know, it will be more like an Aether Pool than a Wild Aether Zone,” the guardian replied.
“And the difference is?” Alaric tried. So many terms were flying around that he was barely keeping up with what was being said.
He’d heard of a few of them… Aether Pools, Wild Aether Zones. Myths of mystical places like this were everywhere… but for someone like him, who’d only got this information a chain of ‘I heard from this who heard from that who heard from whoever followed along the chain’, he was clueless when it came to the details.
“Both of them are places with dense Aether but the Aether from Wild Aether Zones is unruly and often deadly while that of Aether Pools is tame. Of course, an Aether Pool is home to a whole bunch of Aether Beasts, so simply going to an Aether Pool won’t guarantee you return with the treasures of such a gold mine,” LionHeart chuckled.
‘Treasure?’ Now, Alaric was fixated on the fact that there was treasure to be found, ‘My head!’
“Won’t so much aether draw attention to the Five Hills?” Darla wondered.
“That’s why…”
“Oh, that’s why she wants so many Magic Barriers,” the girl’s mouth opened in an ‘o’, not realising she’d just interrupted Gunther only for her eyebrows to furrow again, “Containment type… Will it be alright to contain so much aether in one place?”
“She’s a sharp one,” Garin chuckled, speaking for the first time in a while. The journey to… wherever it was the children were being taken, was turning into more of a lesson on Aether, not that Alaric was complaining.
Tuning back into what Garin was saying, he listened, “Naturally, the nature of aether is that it will keep spreading… unless something ties it down. Wild Aether Zones, as well as Aether Pools, usually have epicentres that keep the aether there coalesced. When so much aether has nowhere to go, it begins to do all sorts of things. It can turn into crystals which are very valuable for their many uses. Aether can also affect normal animals creating what you all know to be Aether Beasts.”
“So, the Crystal Bear was once just a normal bear?” Finn wondered.
“Exactly…”
“Can that happen to a human?”
The man smirked, “Of course it can. Haven’t you asked yourself where this aether we speak of is supposed to be going?”
Alaric’s mind perked up. Garin had just said something essential. The only problem was that his brain was swarming with so much information that he hadn’t had the chance to compile it all neatly in a way he could understand. He had been listening on and on about the topic of Aether Pools and Wild Aether Zones and he could no longer draw conclusions.
Before he could dream of the answer, Darla’s voice tore through the silence, “It’s the whole point of the Body Tempering Ritual. Humans control aether much better than animals do… and that’s the essence of the Body Tempering Ritual.”
Alaric could feel the shivers run down his spine as he stared at the girl in a new light… Had she always been this fast?
“Girl hit the nail right on the head,” Gunther whistled.
Garin nodded, “You’re right, Darla. The Tempering Ritual will transform your bodies on fundamental levels, using Aether as its hammer to forge them anew.”
Cool as that all sounded, Alaric’s mind was somewhere else… ‘Could Darla’s Inborn Ability have to do with her mind?’