Yelora

The creature was now the size of a wine barrel with a lumpy, mature face and long, sharp ears that splayed horizontally out from its head. It was still discolored, still deformed, and now it was awake. Hopping onto its feet, it hissed and tried to run away, but its body bounced off an invisible barrier. It glanced down at the white powder circle and reached to swipe at it. Its clawed hand struck solid air. It tried again. And again.

Yelora’s shoulders slumped. It hadn’t worked. The celestial magic had failed.

“I am sorry,” the Alchemist said, stepping back and retrieving his metal bowl from the floor. The Summoner slipped his glove back on and retreated, too. All of them watched the creature throw itself at the walls of its invisible cage over and over again, like an unattended dwarf drill.

“That’s it?” The words seemed to come from Yelora without the aid of her will—too high-pitched, too petulant. “You’re sorry? Look at that thing!” It was even more horrible now that it was larger. “You didn’t cure it. You made it worse!”

“The Summoner has a unique power,” the Alchemist replied in a level voice. “He brings things to their potential. Things capable of growing, like plants, grow to enormous size. Children grow to maturity. Once a living thing has grown as much as it can, his power ages it instead. I thought his ability might grow the power of my spell. Alas, it wasn’t enough.”

“There must be something else you can try,” Yelora said, hating the desperation in her voice.

The Alchemist laced his fingers in front of him as they all watched the creature pummel itself against the forcefield. “I’m afraid not, m’lady.”

It was no use. All of this had been for nothing. You knew this was a possibility, she reminded herself. But she was out of ideas.

Yelora reached for the royal staff leaning against her chair. If there was no hope, she would put the creature out of its misery. She pointed the tip of her staff at the despicable thing, drooling and muttering to itself as it flailed.

Ronith took a step forward. “M’lady, no!”

Yelora mustered a drop of sympathy. “It is for the best.”

“You said you would let it live!” Ronith pleaded.

She felt her cheek tic. “You forget yourself, Dark Elf.”

“You made an oath!”

It was true, she had made such an oath to Ronith to protect the damaged baby, but that was before the Wizards had failed. Before the Elementals had discovered the Elves’ transgression. And before it had begun to feel like those around her had forgotten the fact that she was the newly crowned Queen of the Elves, and deserved to be treated as such.

Yelora began to recite the lethal spell.

“If I may—” the Alchemist interrupted.

Yelora felt the words halt in her throat. Was it a mis-taken breath or had the Alchemist actually silenced her? She had not seen his hand move.

“Your Dark Elf makes a good point,” the Alchemist continued amicably. “Unlike the Nature Arts, in the Celestial Arts we often encounter things that are not well understood. We find that when this happens, it is best to avoid rash reactions. Perhaps this... thing should be studied before it is disposed of. If we can understand how it came about, why it came about, it could give us answers. Answers that could help your people find a solution to your problem.”

Yelora tested her voice. “I must kill it in order to make reparations with the Elementals.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Mol Morin’s smile was gentle. “A convergence of planetary forces is upon us. Strange occurrences have been seen of late—the Summoner’s power, for example, is the only innate magic to have manifested in an Imperial in generations. And the Elementals have been weakening; surely you realize you should not have survived the attack on the road. Your people’s inability to reproduce may be a part of something larger. This creature’s birth, too. It warrants... study.”

Yelora was certain now that he had silenced her to give himself time to plead his case. Her authority was being undermined at every turn. Even her Dark Elf spoke against her. If Ronith did not respect her, how could she expect these wizards to?

Yelora felt her foundation crumbling beneath her. The Wizard’s magic was supposed to have been the answer. If it wasn’t, then there was nothing left to be done here. Did Mol Morin really think they would learn anything from studying this abomination? Yelora had already learned all there was to be learned—that using the dark magic had been a terrible mistake. That Fara had doomed herself, and the rest of the Elves, and that Yelora was left to flounder in her wake.

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She re-aimed her staff at the damaged Elf-thing and glared at each of them in turn. “I have made my decision.” She spoke the words slowly, carefully, lacing each with challenge.

If anyone tried to stop her now, it would be war, and they knew it.

Ronith’s yellow eyes burned with scorn. The Summoner’s look was intense, but difficult to read. The Alchemist seemed to be calculating in his head. None of these three had shown her the respect befitting a queen, but after this they would. The Elves deserved a strong, competent ruler. She would give them nothing less. She spoke the incantation.

The floor shifted beneath her. The castle shook, the air rumbling with far-off thunder. Was this another of Mol Morin’s attempts to stall her? But Mol Morin was not even looking at her. His wizened brown face was staring out the arched windows, where the sky had changed color from the blue of a robin’s egg to an odd, violet hue.

“What’s happening?” Ronith threw her arms wide for balance.

“I know not,” the Alchemist said grimly.

The Summoner cast Yelora a questioning look, as if she were the one responsible.

Then something shot across the amethyst sky—lines of white, as if drawn there with a celestial quill. A meteor shower in the daytime? The castle continued to shudder. Chunks of stone shifted in the ceiling and plummeted to the floor where they split, throwing up tufts of sandstone dust. One fallen chunk disturbed the white chalk circle, breaking the Alchemist’s containment spell. Yelora re-aimed her staff and hissed the rest of the spell through her teeth, but it was too late. The blast that shot from the tip of her staff struck only rock as the creature skittered away.

“Take cover!” the Summoner shouted, but Yelora ignored him, giving chase.

More chunks of stone rained down on them. Yelora looked up to see a teetering column toppling her way. She touched the Riverstone in her crown, slowing time just enough for her to shift out of its path before it crushed her.

She scanned the room in the slow-motion reality that flowed around her like water currents. Ronith dodged falling debris as luminescent tendrils of a protection spell rippled from the Summoner’s gloved fingertips. The Alchemist, palms pressed together, stood unscathed as if shielded by an invisible umbrella.

Yelora crawled under and over slow-moving rocks and broken bits of furniture, cutting her palm on a shattered beaker. But there was no sign of the creature. Sprites, where was it? The Riverstone’s time-halting spell would not last forever.

She dodged the slow-motion obstacles and peered inside a dark cubby situated below one of the arched windows. Two shiny, unnatural eyes peered back from amongst the pots and cauldrons. The thing would not escape her this time. It was too tight a space for her to wield the staff, but she could use the Riverstone. She would have to be quick. The time-spell would cease the moment she called upon it for a different, darker purpose.

She hesitated. It would be safer to kill it by hand rather than with magic. It was a fast little demon, and if the Riverstone faltered, she risked losing it. Using the speed of the time-lapse spell, she seized the creature by its skinny arm and hauled it out of its hiding place. In its adult form, it was beyond revolting—lumpy, wiry and smelling of swamp rot. Yelora managed to pin its flailing body to the floor and unsheathed her knife to slit its throat.

The castle rocked with an impact. Fragments of stone showered upon them, chunks glancing off her head and shoulders in slow motion, others striking with force as the time-lapse stuttered. The creature writhed with sudden force, knocking the blade from her hand.

Sprites! Yelora used all her weight to keep the creature pinned, but each time the spell faltered, the thing slithered further out of her grasp. Her knife had skittered too far away, but within reach, a sharp, purple shard beckoned her amid the piles of debris. She seized it, and her blood came alive at its touch, a surge of power stronger than any connection with Terris she’d ever experienced. The time-lapse steadied, calming the world around her from a roiling sea to a serene pond. Everything floated, subdued. Even the crystal in her hand throbbed in slow motion, the light glowing within it waxing and waning like the moon.

What was this thing and where had it come from?

Yelora raised her gaze to the window above her, her mouth falling open. The firmament was now the furious pink of a sunset, and the white lines that had streaked across it before had given way to a colossal meteorite with a ragged tail, burning across the sky. Pieces of it fell away as it plunged across the sky—purple shards like the one in her hand.

Yelora yanked the creature by the wrist as she rose to watch the meteorite race toward the horizon. From this high vantage point she could see almost to the ends of the flatlands where the Wizard’s Lair crouched, to the Imperial stronghold where they’d been waylaid on Ambush Pass, and farther, to the dark line of the forestlands of her people. The meteorite sailed above all of those before crashing down, throwing up fire and a bright white dust cloud. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it might have landed in Elf country. Either that or the desert beyond.

The meteorite. That’s where the crystal shard had come from. Yelora studied it in her hand—smooth, violet, and lit from within. It was like no other gem she’d ever seen. And it was powerful. Where the Riverstone faltered, the power of this gem was strong and steady. The crystal pulsed in her hand as the world moved in slow motion around her, like leaves around a whirlpool where she and this shard were the center.

This was beyond even the Celestial Magic of the Wizards. This was a different magic altogether.

But just as quickly as its power had manifested, it cut out. The time-lapse ended. The creature wrenched its wrist from her grasp and skittered away. The world became chaos again. And the shard of crystal crumbled to powder in her hand.

Yelora stood in the broken remains of the Alchemist’s laboratory and felt her thirsty heart fill with hope. She’d lost the creature, but perhaps she didn’t need it anymore. She had prayed for a way to help her people, and this had appeared. A magic never before seen. Never before felt. Perhaps this would be the magic that would revive the Elf Queendom, and she would be the one to wield it.

Yelora brushed the remains of the crystal off her palm and searched for more.