Yelora

Yelora and Sochee rode like a canyon wind toward where the great meteorite had fallen. The terrain flew by like sweeping strokes from an artist’s brush—swaths of dark, dank marshlands, their scent heady and secretive; the gray-green blur of the spindly Imperial woodlands; a ribbon of white sand tracing the salty sea that pushed back the desert lands of the west. Yelora’s heart fluttered in her chest like a small, desperate animal. She would have pushed the horses harder, but Sochee forced her to stop.

“M’lady, forgive me for asking, but what is the urgency?” her friend asked. “It must be dire to leave Ronith behind.”

“I’m sure the Wizards will lend her a horse, if she chooses to join us,” Yelora replied.

Sochee glanced skyward. “Speaking of the Wizards...”

Yelora followed her gaze to the kestrel cutting through the darkening sky, wings spread as it coasted their way. It lit on a tree branch over Yelora’s head, and she reached up to open the small cylinder from its leg and unspool the scroll inside. “The Alchemist has called a Council,” she reported. She crumpled the paper and used a petty spell to convert it to ashes. “Let’s keep moving.”

Sochee’s brow creased. “You’re not going?”

“No.”

“Are you not going to even reply?”

Yelora loved her friend, but she cut her a biting glare. “No, I’m not.” Immediately she regretted saying it, but it was too late.

This new magic was all that mattered. Securing it. Owning it. Wielding it.

She must find the crash site before one of the other races of Terris did. It had landed in Elven lands, she had seen that from the Wizard’s tower. No Imperial or Dwarf or Wizard would beat her to it. The Elementals, however, could already be there.

“Hold onto the bird,” she said. “We may yet have need of a messenger.”

Yelora allowed five hours of rest and no more. Curled at the foot of a rubbery seaside tree, her dreams were plagued with visions of others arriving at the crash site before her to claim it. Sometimes it was Imperials, sometimes Dwarves or Elementals. One time it was the Alchemist himself, with the Summoner at his side, their faces twisted in the purple light. She awoke with a cry to find the horses grazing. Nudging Sochee awake, she sipped some dew from a nearby leaf, untied her steed, and mounted. Sochee whistled to the kestrel and followed suit.

They rode through day, afternoon, and evening, pushing into the western woodlands. The air changed, tinged with the smell of lightning fires and something else. The ground was streaked with burns from fallen meteorite debris, but there was no sign of any crystal shards. When they crested a low ridge, however, the hairs on Yelora’s arms jumped to life.

A crater opened up beneath them, so wide and long she couldn’t see the other side of it. Inside it was the smoking ruin of what had been Elven forest lands, although they were too sparse and close to the salt sea to be inhabited, thank the sprites. Blackened splinters of trees littered the crater’s bottom along with fragments of purple. The meteorite itself lay half buried and smoking, the size of the Wizard’s lair and split open like a geode, its purple innards exposed.

Yelora sucked in a breath as she dismounted. Her boots skidded down the steep, sandy slope. She held up a hand against the heat that radiated off the meteorite like the celestial magic the Alchemist and Summoner had used on the creature. Reaching down, she collected a purple shard, its power buzzing in her hand, the air thick with magic.

She dropped the shard into the pocket of her breeches. She would claim this new power. No one would stop her.

“We’ll send a message to all the Elflands,” Yelora coaxed the kestrel from Sochee, who was gazing out over the great and beautiful devastation. “Have them each send a hundred of their best warriors and a hundred of their most skilled builders. This will become our new stronghold.”

She put her lips close to the bird’s ear, and it stilled as she whispered to it; among the Elf folk, there was no need for scrolls. When she was certain the kestrel had understood her message, she threw it into the air, where it spread its wings and, with a raucous cry, took to the heavens.

“What shall we do until they come?” Sochee asked.

“We shall hope.”

“Hope for what, m’lady?”

“That you and I can hold it until they come. The Wizard Council should keep the others busy. While they yap about what should be done, we’ll have already staked our claim. These are our lands, after all. The rain that falls upon them is our rain, and therefore so is this magic.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sochee began to reply, but something caught her eye, and Yelora followed the point of her nocked arrow to the faint trembling of a pile of stones. Suddenly, one stone leapt atop another, then a third, and a fourth, more and more until they formed the familiar likeness. Yelora seized a crystal from the ground at her feet and awakened her staff. The Elemental erupted from the earth in front of them, its sandstone body fearsome and towering.

“These are Elflands, Guardian of Terris!” she shouted, staff brandished in threat. “You are not welcome here!”

Sochee glanced oddly at her, bow at the ready. Yelora could read the look on her face—the Elementals embodied Terris herself. They were welcome everywhere. They were everywhere.

But Yelora was fighting for the Elves’ very existence, and the Oracle had been clear on one thing, at least: she must hold the crash site. Control this new magic. That was exactly what she intended to do.

The Elemental’s ice-chip eyes regarded her once before it turned away and, with a roar that shook the crater walls and made Yelora’s head hum, drove its stone fist into a cluster of purple shards again and again, pulverizing them into dust.

“No!” Yelora cried.

But the Elemental was not listening to her. Its head swiveled on its great shoulders until it spotted a second trove of purple, and, with a speed unnatural for a creature of such size and heft, advanced on it and destroyed it with mighty blows.

Hopping between hot spots inside the crater, Yelora predicted the Elemental’s next target and hissed a protection spell over the gleaming purple cluster. Only when the monster’s fist glanced off the magic shards did its gaze find hers.

“This crash site belongs to the Elf Queendom,” she bellowed, “and I’ll not suffer you to destroy it!”

“You again, Queen of the Elves?” Its voice rolled across the terrain like a gathering thunderhead. “Has your kind not done enough harm already?”

Its fist came down once more, but Yelora’s spell held. “That was Queen Fara’s doing, not mine. I tried to fix it.”

“What made you think the Wizards had the power to undo your evil?”

The Elemental grabbed a chunk of rock from the crater floor and sent it flying at her. Yelora was forced to pull her spell back and cast a protection spell over Sochee and herself. The Elemental took advantage as she did, pulverizing another purple deposit.

“It was not our evil; it was yours! We only buried it for you!”

As the monster lumbered for its next target, Yelora cast a binding spell around its ankles, halting it in mid-step. The Elemental lost its balance, pitched forward, and caught itself on its great fists. It took a moment to recover, turning to her on its hands and knees.

A mixture of surprise and terror prickled inside Yelora. She had expected it to stumble, but not to fall.

“That evil should have stayed buried,” it growled, getting to its feet. “Instead, you used it to create an abomination.”

Yelora’s blood surged inside her like insects trapped in a hive. The mistake you have yet to make.

But that mistake was already made. And it had been Fara’s, not hers.

The Elemental was advancing toward the next deposit of crystals. She hopped around smoking patches of blackened forest in its wake. “This new magic can help us. I can use it to undo the damage that’s been done. Do you not see the potential?”

The Elemental’s fist came down, but once again, a spell from Yelora’s staff sent it glancing off. The ice chip eyes flashed. The gravel voice rumbled. “If we kill this Elf Queen, they can appoint another.”

Was it talking to itself or the other Elementals, ones that weren’t here? Were they all linked through the crust of the planet? How many were there? Not even the Elves or the Wizards knew for certain.

The Elemental’s attention shifted in her direction, and it came at Yelora with the empty gaze and precision of a hungry wolf. She stumbled over hot rock as she backed away, staff brandished. A swarm of Sochee’s insects dive-bombed the behemoth’s glittering eyes, but it swept them away with a colossal fist. Yelora used the Riverstone to cast an invisibility spell and sidestepped, but if the Elemental could not see her, it was clear it could still sense her, perhaps by the touch of her feet upon Terris. She dove out of the way of a punishing sandstone fist and sprinted for the shelter of the meteorite itself. Ducking inside the partially hollowed-out shell, she slowed her breaths, still invisible. If she didn’t move, perhaps it wouldn’t be able to track her.

But the Elemental was already stalking toward her, Sochee’s arrows glancing off its broad stone back. One arrow tip burrowed into a crease in its neck, but with a tilt of the monster’s head, it fell out and clattered to the ground, useless.

The monster halted just outside the shell of the meteorite, where Yelora stood motionless, like a creature inside a partly hatched egg. Its gaze flicked about, searching. It could not see her; at least there was that. But how could she defeat it? They could not play this game of cat and mouse forever. Perhaps she and Sochee could subdue it, tie it up, or force it back into the earth, then create a magical perimeter to keep it and others out. The magic of the crystals could help them.

Invisible as she was, Yelora could not see her staff or her hands wielding it. She took shallow breaths of the hot air that smelled of sulfur and something faintly sweet—foreign elements from worlds that would take even an Elf’s lifetime to reach. The monster’s tiny eyes shifted in its great face, seeking her out and failing.

Then she felt the flicker of the Riverstone in her crown, its magic wavering. Her hands holding the staff flashed briefly before her vision, nothing more than flickering ghosts, but it was enough. The Elemental’s attention found her and settled on her, ambivalent and deadly. Yelora would have to make a stand, here, though it be her last.