Ascension: Corso 17 (The Myriad book 1)

"I’m going to do what?” I asked.

“I know it may sound unbelievable,” Taanyth said. “But you will save us, without a doubt.”

This didn’t add up. The Harbinger had said that finding Taanyth and Laryn would help me… Although, now that I thought about it, he hadn’t said that. All he’d done was told me to find them, not why. What is he playing at? I thought.

Taanyth gave me an expectant look. “Sorry, what were you saying?” I asked.

This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. “You didn’t come here by accident,” Taanyth clarified. “You were sent here to save us.”

“Save you from what?” I was having a hard time believing most of this.

“Well, in the short term, the Alok,” Taanyth said. “And in the long term-”

“Wait, what’s the Alok?” I asked, still not really believing him.

Taanyth sighed and the furrows around his eyes deepened. “I don’t know,” he said. “No one does.

“A few months ago, something changed in the forest. I’m the elder of this village, as well as a druid; I have a connection to the trees themselves. I can’t converse with them, exactly, but they give me a sense of the goings on in the forest.”

“So, what happened a few months ago?” I asked.

“Something entered the forest, something foreign, something alien,” he said. “Like a plague from another world. But it wasn’t. I was concerned, of course, but I ignored it. That was foolish. It was only a few days before the first disappearance.

“I should have seen something like it coming, but I disobeyed my instinct and was idle. Three nights after the disturbance in the forest, a scream was heard in one of the houses, followed by childlike laughter. Those in neighboring trees saw only a flash of light.

“The house was searched, of course, but it was useless. There was no sign of a struggle, or any other disturbance. But the owner of the house was gone.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“An elf by the name of Fay,” Taanyth said. “She was Laryn’s sister. Since then, there have been thirty-three other disappearances, each the same as the first. There’s a scream, a flash of light, and then laughter. No clues as to what occurred.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to them?” I queried.

“No. They could have been killed or merely taken, but we have no way of knowing what happened to the victims of the Alok,” Taanyth replied. “Many have condemned them as dead, or lost and never to return. Others hold out hope that the lost can be found.”

“That’s what Laryn was doing when he found me,” I realized. “He was looking for his sister-”

My sentence was cut off when something very unexpected happened. There were sounds of movement at the entrance to the tree, and turned to see a figure step into it. She was in her early teens, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail, but the most noticeable thing about her was her right arm. She wore a brass gauntlet with a glowing blue circle on the back of her hand.

The moment she stepped into view, she extended her hand and a pale blue bolt shot out of her palm. It flashed across the room like an arrow, hitting Taanyth as he turned to face her. He was encased in a thick layer of ice, frozen where he stood.

“What did you do?” I shrieked, shocked by the sudden attack.

She looked at me for the first time, and conflicting emotions clashed on her face. I picked out annoyance, anger, guilt, but I was sure there were more that I couldn’t recognize. It lasted just a moment, and then her face morphed into an emotionless mask. “Don’t worry, it’s not fatal,” she drawled. “The ice is altered with alchemy, it’s more of a containment membrane than anything.” She stopped. “Why am I explaining this to you?”

“Who are you?” I cried.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Why not?”

With a flick of her wrist, she shot a ball of fire at me. Shocked, my reaction was delayed, and I could smell burning hair when I ducked. “Because I’m here to kill you.”

I backpedaled trying to create more distance between me and my attacker. It wouldn’t make a distance, because the girl had planted herself between me and my only exit.

“If it’s any consolation,” she said. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Why would that be any consolation?” I dodged another orb of fire.

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shot a bolt of ice at me, and this time I wasn’t fast enough to dodge it. She must have aimed low, because my legs were encased in ice and frozen to the floor of the tree, the same way as Taanyth.

The girl’s face morphed into a grimace when she saw she had struck home. She was unhappy with this result. I realized that she had been telling the truth when she had said she didn’t want to kill me.

The next moment I remember in perfect clarity. I was panicked, positive that my death was imminent, but unable to prevent it. The girl had her arm extended, but her face had turned away. She didn’t want to see me die. There were two tongues of flame shooting from her gauntlet. They were entwined, spiraling towards me in helix.

At the moment before my death, the universe exploded in my mind. For the first time in my life, I knew how small I was. There were lots of people on Alaran, of course there were, but there had been very few in Stratha, so the population of the world hadn’t sunk in. Now I knew that the population of the world was miniscule in the face of how many lives existed everywhere. There were countless worlds beyond Alaran, with things on them that I never would have dreamed of. And, I realized, I held the power to go there. Go anywhere. Explore the infinite worlds.

But first I had to deal with the problem at hand: I was about to be incinerated. An instinct buried deep in my mind burst into action. Instead of attempting to avoid the flames, I let them wash over me. I felt warm, but in a pleasant way. By the same instinct, I shot a column of fire out of my hands and at my attacker.

She turned to face me in time to realize her sudden impending peril. She seemed more perplexed than afraid, and she conjured an icy shield from her gauntlet, but it was too weak and too hasty. The force of my magic fire knocked her into the wall of the tree. She fell to the ground, unconscious.

When I was sure she wasn’t going to try to kill me, I took an unsteady breath. What just happened? I looked at my hands, hands that had summoned fire moments before. One thought blotted out my mind, silencing everything else, including the fact that I had almost been killed. I have magic!