The air was as dry as a bone and unsettling as if some unseen force had sucked up all the moisture and gone to great lengths to suffocate her. She assumed it was some sort of slap on the wrist from the Almighty for what she had done to Nash.
But the more she bent her mind, the more certain she was that she was simply overthinking. What happened to Nash was not a conscious decision on her part – at least not at the time it happened.
All she did was stop him from hurting her mum. Nash didn’t die in the end, did he? So the Almighty should punish him if he must reprimand someone, and definitely not her. It wasn’t her fault that he was such a heartless person; whatever happened to him, he brought it upon himself!
She drew a deep breath and anxiously looked around herself in the murk. Unwittingly, she kept close to the woods, where the air was less dry. But she didn’t dare to enter the denseness out of fear of getting lost or caught in a trap in the land of dark elves, namely, Freyskul.
In no time, the temperature plummeted, and the weather became chilly. She chafed her numb arms and pulled her shoulders up to her ears as a gust of wind struck her face.
The clouds parted, showing how close she was to the Jewarta-Lordôm border. She shivered as if stabbed by a thousand knives all at once and breathed out into the bitterly cold air, which was unbearable now that her long hair was gone and her neck was bare.
Her hardened face lost all colour, and her body became as stiff as a corpse. Her skin pulsated and stung as if pierced by needles, just as yet another merciless breeze blew at her face and swept her short hair down, only to obstruct her vision.
The ground was as dry as her hardened, pallid face and cracked into a thousand pieces as if a massive earthquake had ripped through the barren land and destroyed everything in its path.
No sensible creature would ever come this close to Lordôm’s borders willingly, so it was no surprise that silence persisted except for the whistling wind, which roared and gave her chills. It sounded like a sinister, weeping child, a howling creature intent on deafening her and even driving her insane.
It was as inhumane as it could be, yet eerily similar to the men who banished her kin from their promised land, Jewarta, and claimed it for themselves! She wouldn’t for a single penny aid the children of the Almighty – those wicked beings who ruined everything and took their land without remorse! Never ever!
She smirked. How come the beasts were said to be vicious when the only beasts she knew were the humans?
Yet she knew that not everyone in the north thought alike about the sorcerers. But they still let her kinsmen suffer rather than defy the former king’s orders, didn’t they? Those milksops didn’t even dare to defend the sorcerers, who taught the wizards of Mahgrad spells and sorcery!
She came to an abrupt stop, squinting to get a better view. The ground was frozen, and so was she, yet she sweated out of control when a strange heat engulfed her entire body in response to the terrifying sight in front of her.
The notorious bridge, the Salkire, spanned several miles in the fog that shrouded Lordôm, covering the land in eternal darkness since the sun never set there. That, however, was not the reason she backed away in shock and blinked past herself. Something else caught her by surprise – something wicked, if not worse.
A stately figure appeared through the dense mist. She didn’t know who it was. He was riding this ebony horse across the Salkire encircled by a moat; the sorcerers of Mahgrad placed the moat there to trap the beasts and prevent them from crossing over to Jewarta and, eventually, Gartâr itself.
The moat, forged with forlorn sorcery, kept the Almighty’s children safe in those glorious times when magic was still a mystery to the humans. But why did the sorcerers enchant Lordôm and help the humans?
The answer was quite simple. They did so, her forefathers, to maintain the peace between the two ruling kingdoms in the north and south – between Gartâr and Jewarta. But those ungrateful beings turned on her kinfolk and stole Jewarta along the way!
The curse, however, that had been placed here was gradually fading away. The humans’ flawed and played-out magical abilities could not reseal the Salkire and repel the brutes.
Why would a stranger come here of all places? She was here because she fled. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t approach the border. Lordôm teemed with morbid creatures – beasts that would beyond any doubt kill her the moment they caught sight of her, even though she, too, was a child of the Queen.
Strangely, the stranger was already halfway across the bridge. His dark, almost ink-black horse was narrowly visible through the fog. It was one of the most magnificent creatures she had ever laid eyes on.
The stranger wore a burgundy cape that concealed his face. It shined and glimmered through the murk and looked soft. It resembled something the elves from the Great Forest of Secrets would create.
The thing was, the cape glowed unnaturally throughout the darkness as if thousands of swarming fireflies carried it in the air as the horse galloped. She gaped wide and couldn’t take her eyes off the stranger. Such a peculiar yet mesmerising sight had been scarce ever since the humans in Belzcakir forbade magic and sorcery among commoners.
She mused about whether he was a nobleman’s son, then shook her head. The nobility wouldn’t risk their lives to embark on such a perilous adventure. Such mighty men, mind you, indulged themselves in the mundane matters of life rather than risk their lives in the land of the beasts. Everyone knew that!
As the stranger approached, she searched for a hiding spot. There, amid the barren land, she found two withered bushes and crept behind them. The waves boiled into serpents and attempted to pull the stranger into the moat. She gasped and shut her eyes.
Through the fog, she noticed something behind the stranger. Her heart skipped a beat, and she held her breath, only to heave after air within seconds as the humanlike creatures pursued the stranger across the bridge. The fahltyrs!
The hideous creatures strode on four elongated limbs as thin as sticks. They were bony, like those who succumbed to the Black Death yet uncannily human.
Their faces were oblong and wrinkled, lined with years of torture and bloodlust; dark and slimy blood dripped from their lipless mouths as if they had recently drained a giant out of blood. Their skin was so rotten that she could see every single bone on their wobbling bodies. A gentle prod was more than enough to break them into thousands of pieces.
She had to get as far away from here as possible! That much was dead right! But she couldn’t just return to Jewarta or venture into the enchanted woods controlled by the dark elves, could she? So she did the first thing that came to mind. She summoned her kindred animal.
First, she repeated the spell to herself, trying to recall every word and get the intonation right, before finally saying it aloud. Then she opened her eyes wide and ascended into the darkness that buried Lordôm.
Her wings grew out of her spine, and her body turned black like coal as she flapped once. As she shrank into a raven, her sharp eyes were all that remained of her former shape.
Every sorcerer and sorceress had a kindred spirit. Hers was the devoted raven. Its unbeatable wisdom and keen eyes kept other birds from challenging its authority. The raven was second only to the mythical dragon, but no one had seen a sorcerer with such a kindred spirit since, well, forever.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
They were rare, in fact so rare, that only the Queen of Hezakhal herself was known to be one.
She flew above the fog, which was so dense that it had formed a cloudy veil over the border, thus obscuring her view of the stranger and the bridge.
She then noticed the ebony horse emerge from the mist and gallop away without its owner and promptly stopped flailing her tiny wings. Curious, she flew into the thick fog to see what had happened to the stranger.
The hooded figure had passed out on the parched ground inches from the Salkire. But the silence didn’t last. She jerked as a strange din came through the mist and shifted her gaze to the bloodthirsty creatures marching towards them at the end of the bridge.
Her heart pounded faster and faster the entire time; it even drowned out the creatures’ screams and triumphant outbursts as they closed in on them. Thousands of thoughts raced through her mind as she grunted and flapped her wings to stay aloft.
She was getting tired and noticed how heavy her wings had become all of a sudden, weighing her down inch by inch towards the stranger on the ground against her will – or so she liked to think.
What had got into her? She landed next to the lifeless figure instead of flying away to a safe place. As she bravely faced the fahltyrs charging at them, she did something that even she didn’t expect! Arlena croaked.
With no hesitation, she croaked as loudly and menacingly as she could. She had done nothing remotely similar to this before. The creatures came to a sudden halt, although they didn’t give up as she hoped.
They hissed at her, blood trickling from their lipless mouths. That was when she realised they only responded when she made a sound.
The fahltyrs flailed their arms, ready to twist her neck off with a single movement if given the chance and if she, against all odds, came too close and made a noise. She glimpsed at the stranger, who groaned and, finally, awakened from his slumber.
Then she recalled something and opened her eyes wide out of fear. They were sensitive to noise! The creatures encircled them from all sides. She tried to hush the stranger, to no avail. For a brief second, she wished he would just stop breathing altogether.
Her mum warned her that being too nice would lead to her demise, and unfortunately, she was right. But instead of dying as expected and succumbing to her fears, she opened her eyes to a bright light appearing out of nowhere and enclosing her from all sides, even blinding her vision.
Squinting, she followed the transparent light until she realised it was coming from the stranger, who pulled something out from under his burgundy cape and pointed it at the fahltyrs that jerked back in response.
It wasn’t until then that she realised he was brandishing a sword that was equally translucent and invisible as the intense light that encircled them. The sight was so magical and heavenly that even the blind fahltyrs could see it.
She frowned and cocked her head, more surprised and befuddled than anything else. Was he some kind of sorcerer, she reasoned to herself before shaking her head in disbelief. No, he wasn’t one of them. It was common knowledge that sorcerers were bound by human laws.
They weren’t allowed to practise sorcery. This was the reason those who used magic or sorcery stank of ashes.
The stranger had no distinctive smell. He was a wizard, no doubt, but not an ordinary wizard. Commoners couldn’t use magic outside of Belzcakir. To roam freely without being punished by the royal guards, he had to be someone important – perhaps an apprentice on a quest or a nobleman’s son.
The stranger beckoned her to fly away into the thick fog and towards the sky. Though baffled by his silent request, she flailed her tiny wings – just in the nick of time.
Suddenly, he spun and pointed his sword at the fahltyrs like a madman. The charmed fahltyrs followed the sword’s tip as acrid smoke belched out from it and ringed them. The wizard whispered something bizarre in a hushed tone then. She thought he was spewing nonsense at first.
However, she soon realised that he was using spells to transform the smoke into shards of glass. But she couldn’t recognise the spell. It sounded like a foreign language and was nothing like the words of wisdom Celeste taught her, which more or less meant that he was using magic and not sorcery.
Just as the glass shards mercilessly pierced through the bewitched creatures, she nimbly lost control of her wings and gasped in terror at the spectacular sight of the bloodbath. She distorted her face, rather disgusted, as the herd of beasts bled to death right in front of her eyes.
Their hysterical screams reverberated throughout Jewarta if not all of Yiraál. The creatures gradually withered, turning into grey, dull dust. With a loud thud, the stranger swung his sword straight into the barren soil, shattering it into more bits and fissures. The blade turned dark red after sucking blood from the ground.
Struggling to stay afloat, she carefully eyed the wizard, wondering what was going through his mind. He observed the molten beings, perhaps to confirm their demise.
Soon after, he tucked his sword away and let out a sigh of relief. She thought he had forgotten about her already, but he did not. He gestured for her to descend. Startled, she sniffed herself. Did she reek of ashes? Even though he had saved her life, she remained afloat in the chilly air.
In her mind, the stranger was a powerful wizard trained to kill people like her – although he didn’t kill her at that moment. These thoughts were indeed the source of her confusion.
She smacked her beak and was on the fence about what to do. The stranger patiently waited for her to descend the entire time. It didn’t look like he meant to harm her, why else would he persistently wait like this for?
Drawing a deep breath, she threw in the towel. Before landing on the cool ground, she hesitantly fluttered her wings one last time. Her wings disappeared as if they had never existed; she was back to her true shape in a heartbeat.
But the wizard didn’t seem surprised. It looked like he had expected her off-the-wall transformation. She pushed her shoulders back and straightened her spine to come across as braver than she was.
The wizard remained silent for a while. He eyed her up and down, too immersed in his thoughts. Then he broke the lengthy silence. He sounded more youthful, more orotund than she had imagined because of the spectacle she had just witnessed.
“Didn’t anyone warn you to stay away from the borders, lad?”
She thought it best to err on the side of caution and not ask the wizard the same question.
“I got lost in the woods, sir.”
The stranger peered at the woods where a cacophony of unsettling sounds could be heard, rising and echoing throughout the surrounding area.
“I thought no sane child of the Queen dared to wander alone…”
He knew what she was; this newfound insight fraught her with fear. Why did he not kill her along with those beasts? It made no sense. She was his enemy.
“It just… happened to be so,” she said, adding with her heart in her mouth. “Can I ask what brings a human to the Land of the Beasts?”
For a long time, the wizard remained silent, refusing to answer her question. Instead, he asked her something entirely unrelated to her inquiry.
“Where’re you going, child?”
Arlena smirked. She was fourteen and not a child.
“I’m not sure, my lord. I guess just about anywhere, really.”
He took his time replying. Something in his gaze, even though she couldn’t see it clearly, changed within a heartbeat. Somehow, this odd, spine-chilling pause made her blood curdle.
“Would you like to accompany me, then?” He raised his hood slightly to take a better look at her. “To Mahgrad, that is.”
Arlena’s eyes widened as she stammered out an answer: “Mahgr—what? I mean—”
“There’s a mage I know. He’s been looking, well, sort of, for an apprentice, and since you—”
“Mahgrad? I’m not even a—”
“You defended me back there.” He nodded at what remained of the creatures. “I want to return the favour.”
Return the favour!? Why would he even suppose she wanted to join Mahgrad and risk being slain? But he didn’t burst into a peal of frenzied laughter as she somewhat hoped; he meant every single word and waited for a genuine response.
“But really, I am, you know, sir, a- a sorce—”
“I know, so what do you say?”
She didn’t know how to respond. Only those of noble birth could join the guild. Arlena was neither a human nor a member of the aristocracy.
She wasn’t even a boy. Besides, it was common knowledge that Belzcakir was safeguarded by spells. The moment she stepped foot inside the castle, the guards would slay her!
“I’ll make sure no one finds out.”
As if that makes me feel any better or safer, she thought.
“How does it benefit you if I join the—” She couldn’t finish the sentence because it sounded so absurd. The wizard would gain nothing should she join the guild. Absolutely nothing! The stranger acted as if he didn’t hear her and turned his back.
He grinned from ear to ear, amused, and left her behind. Did he expect her to follow him? Just like that!?
Arlena did not move an inch and just ogled the wizard as he headed westward. She gulped and let her gaze shift from the raging moat that tirelessly threatened her to the just as eerie screams coming from the woods, which grew louder the entire time. she couldn’t just return home, could she, and she could not stay in the immense darkness either; that much she knew if nothing else.
But joining Mahgrad was just… Perhaps this was her chance? Maybe this was the path and destiny the Queen intended for her? Her kin were unfamiliar with magic, and no one she knew had ever mastered it. If she could master magic and bring the spells to the mountains, her kinsmen could finally confront their oppressors.
No matter how much she thought it over, a spark of hope was all her people needed to gain back their faith in the Queen and reclaim what was rightfully theirs. Her peculiar encounter with the wizard meant something, didn’t it?
Even though she could not understand why the wizard acted so kindly towards her. With these unfamiliar thoughts in her mind, she sprinted after the wizard.
She didn’t know what the stranger was planning, not that it mattered anyway, all that mattered was that she learnt magic and earned the trust of the humans.
When the time came, they would succumb to her wrath and regret letting her into Mahgrad!