Kashur

“Where is Sochee?” Kashur demanded as Ronith locked the dungeon behind them with Yelora inside. The Blood Mage’s amber eyes flashed with fury, but he ignored it. “You’re her friend, too. What happened to her?”

“The old man may have a soft spot for you, but you don’t fool me for a second, Summoner.” Her staff was out before he’d even seen her reach for it. Time lapse.

He put his hands up. “Come on, Ronith. You must see how insane this all is!”

“Hands behind you!”

He did as she said. There was no way around it. “We have a plan to save your people. To save the Elves!”

“The Elves aren’t my people!”

With a sweep of her hands, Ronith sent a pair of cuffs flying onto his wrists. She hustled him, protesting, through the hallways full of leering Goblins and Wizards politely trying to look the other way. In one corridor, Kashur caught sight of Moyshec’s worried face. He gave his friend a subtle shake of the head as if to say, it’s not what it looks like. Moyshec caught Ronith’s glare and looked away. Opening a metal door, she shoved him inside and slammed it shut, immediately sealing it with magic.

“You think Mol Morin will approve of this?” he demanded at the solid metal door. “I’m like a son to him!”

“I’ll tell him you’re resting after your trying ordeal seducing the Elf Queen.”

He glanced up at the lintel above where Gorlo peered at him through a decorative opening, the knot of his leash at his throat. “Gorlo, buddy—” he started to say. The creature just made a lewd gesture before disappearing.

Kashur kicked the metal door as their footfalls retreated. He crossed to the window and tried to reach his bound hands through the metal bars, but a barrier spell zapped him. He might have been able to overcome the magic with his own, except his wrists were cuffed. The only thing to grab out there, anyway, were the poisonous tendrils from the crystal garden, creeping like tentacles from the broken meteorite. They looked ready to crush the castle with a hearty squeeze.

Inside the room, he scoured the walls and floor for something alive—a tiny weed growing through the stones, something he could make large enough to burst a crack open for an escape, but there was nothing. Kashur was ready to forfeit his freedom from his curse in order to save Yelora, but he couldn’t even do that. There was not one thing alive in here. Nothing that could grow.

He fell back onto the bed, his cuffed hands pressing into his back. Leaving Yelora face down on the floor in the dungeon believing he’d deceived her had felt like carving out one of his own ribs.

Why hadn’t he stood up to Mol Morin, rather than playing this longest of long shots—one that didn’t even work as Ronith had seen right through it? If he had, perhaps the other Wizards would have joined his mutiny. His colleagues looked cowed rather than crazed. They had to see the growing threat. Even Ronith had retained the Blood Mage’s red crystal in her staff rather than switch it out for a more powerful purple one.

This tinder box was ripe for lighting, but Kashur couldn’t do anything about it trapped in this room.

Meanwhile, high above them, the planets spun in their silent orbits, like gears opening the jaws of fate, throwing wide the doors to their demise.

The Celestiri were coming. They were coming, and there was nothing Kashur could do to stop it.

***

Bayne

Taking Ivy by the hand, Bayne led her to the knoll made by the murdered Elemental. They crouched at the foot of the looming willow tree growing over it, its roots gripping the earth like the claws of a bird of prey.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“What’s happening?” Ivy asked, out of breath from the brisk hike and tired from a long night without sleep.

“Kenji Zamora has given away Yelora and Kashur’s position. They’ve surely been captured by now.”

Ivy’s dark eyes were worried. “Did she really kill an Elemental?”

“Aye, that she did. But it was reborn and has forgiven her, as ye and I both know. We need it to come speak fer itself.”

“I haven’t seen it since we arrived here.”

A crashing in the bushes startled them. Bayne pulled his knife and whirled toward it. “Show yerself!”

The Emperor split the bushes with a grimace, brushing himself off. “Settle down, Dwarf. I tried to communicate with you through the golem’s radio, but you’d already taken off. I can’t believe you made me chase you through the camp.”

Bayne felt his pulse settle. “I thought ye were afraid to leave the protection of the machine.”

“Yes, well, I guess you could say I’m tired of all the cages. And I want to know what the plan is.”

Bayne nodded. The boy was turning into a leader after all. “We must not forget who our true enemy is. We must get a transformer inside those walls and activate it in the heart of the crash site. That’ll allow us to convert the greatest amount of its poisonous energy back to Terris.”

The Emperor settled himself on a root across from Bayne, eyes shining in his wan face. “But if Kashur and Yelora have been captured, who will open the gates?”

“Maybe someone can sneak in the same way they did?” Ivy suggested.

The Emperor shook his head. “That entrance will be well-guarded now that it’s been discovered. But, truthfully, we don’t need to get an entire golem inside. We only need to get a transformer inside.”

“Not true,” Bayne argued. “The power unleashed when the transformer is activated on the meteorite will be incredible. It will kill the person wielding it if they aren’t protected by the magic dampening properties of the golem.”

“Are we certain of that?” the Emperor asked.

“It was too strong to use on you,” Ivy reminded him. “The Elemental told me.”

“The release of energy will be overwhelming, like a volcano,” Bayne said.

The Emperor sighed. “Not to mention, one person carrying a weapon inside will be quickly overcome by their forces. Our getting inside the gates was always reliant on a diversion, and we still need that. Mol Morin was able to sway our loyalties with a half-truth. But if we could show the people the whole truth, that the Elementals have not been destroyed, perhaps we could guide them back to our side.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Bayne said, touching the knoll beneath them. “At its gravesite.”

“If anyone can get us inside this stronghold, it’s a Guardian of Terris,” the Emperor agreed. “And I think it knows we’re on its side.”

Bayne turned to Ivy. “Call to it, child. It came to ye first. Perhaps it will come to ye again.”

She nodded. “I’ll try.” Pressing her hands into the soil, she closed her eyes. Bayne moved back instinctively and felt the Emperor do the same. Heat lightning flashed in the clouds above them, and Ivy’s skin seemed to light up with it, too.

Bayne pressed his red-ringed fingers to his lips and prayed to the Rubies for their help.

The night was quiet. The wind lulled them with whispers through the heavy limbs hanging above them.

And then a crashing noise, louder than the Emperor had been. Larger. Too large to be the baby Elemental.

Bayne held out his knife. The Emperor’s sword appeared beside it.

“Ivy, get behind us!” the Emperor cried, and the little girl scampered for safety.

Two tawny paws appeared under the canopy of the willow, like those of a lion, but far larger than any lion that had ever lived. Bayne heard the moan of terror come out of himself as he raised his gaze above the treetop where two enormous rustling wings settled into their places and a great, hooked beak tweaked sideways so a beady eye could peer down at them.

“It’s a griffin!” the Emperor choked.

The beak lowered toward them, and Ivy screamed as it opened, wide and dark, as large as the gaping maw of a mine entrance. Bayne held his knife with both shaking hands. When it made its move, he would go for the eye.

But there was movement inside its mouth. Something small and brown came sauntering off the black bird tongue, its eyes glinting like metal, its craggy mouth in that eternal frown.

“It’s you!” Ivy squeaked, pushing between the Emperor and Bayne to run and throw her arms around it.

The griffin promptly closed its beak and nodded to Ivy. “Greetings, Marked One.”

Ivy nodded back, then turned her attention to the Baby Elemental, nodding and uh-huhing as if the two of them were having a conversation. Bayne was afraid to move. The Emperor appeared similarly terrified.

Finally, she turned to them and smiled, rubbing the scar on her neck. “We have a way into the stronghold.”