Mixing Magic [Draft 2]: Chapter 14.2

Ayda was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but exhaustion overcame the chaos inside her, and almost as soon as she found a comfortable patch of moss in the cave behind the waterfall, she fell into a dreamless sleep.

She woke to light streaming into the cave and noise audible even over the waterfall’s roar. She woke to blankness, an odd calm where no emotions warred inside her because they had all been carefully buried. It was enough. For now.

Tel and Cinder were gone. Ayda left the cave and found that the noise came from dozens of unicorns — at least two hundred — who had assembled in the grass close to the waterfall. She blinked. Right. The meeting at sunrise. And there were Tel and Cinder in the crowd. Ayda flew to join them.

Emerilla stood on a large rock beside the pool. As the sun crested the eastern hills, a hush fell across the crowd.

“My people!” Emerilla shouted, her voice magically amplified so it reverberated through the glade. “I call you today to ask you to make a difficult choice.”

Ayda shifted in the air. Were they going to fight?

“All of you know of Nadra and the destruction she has brought to the Kingdoms in the last two months, destruction that has reached even here, to Archaron. Even now, Nadra hammers away at us, fighting to break into our sanctuary. But outside, it is far worse. Whole kingdoms have fallen, their people refugees, their magic stolen. Still, in these months, I did not act. I did not call you to act.

“I say to you now: I was wrong!” Emerilla threw up her head, a steely glint in her eye. “And now, Nadra has the last piece she needs to cast an untested spell of unutterable magnitude at the Well itself.”

The unicorn’s words slammed into Ayda like a shock of wind in midair. Her fault. She had been selfish. She had lead Madeline there, and now she had lost her.

“We have two days. She wants to believe that she is doing good in trying to reconnect the humans’ world to the Well. But if she succeeds, it will be disastrous. She will take advantage of the confusion in — she will set herself up as a goddess, as a savior, and continue to abuse her power. And if the spell fails, the fallout could cause another Kingdom to be severed.”

Ayda felt like a vise had gripped her heart. If it did go wrong, if a kingdom was severed…

“Many of you know the source of all our troubles: Evota has a talisman, that lets her steal and manipulate dynamic magic, and affords her powerful protection besides. But there is a way to negate the talisman’s powers. Still, reaching her will not be easy. In two days, I will need you. I call you now to action, I revoke our non-intervention creed. Who will follow me to the Well?It won’t be easy. But we have hidden ourselves away in guilt too long. Who will fight with me?”

The crowd roared, many of the unicorns rearing and pawing the air in their fervor. Others did not, and still others seemed hesitant or unsure. Maybe, just maybe, they had a chance. It didn’t change that Ayda was the one to have forced their hand.

“Then go, and prepare,” Evota said. “We will ride at dawn tomorrow.”

The meeting broke. Ayda turned away from Tel and Cinder, not wanting them to see her struggle to maintain her composure. She hovered there, breathing evenly, arms stiff at her sides.

“Ayda.” A warm, black-furred tail brushed her legs. “What is it?”

Part of her wanted to tear herself away, cross the border and fly deep into the mountains, never to be seen again. But the part of her that wanted nothing more than a warm, gentle touch won out, and she let Cinder guide her away from the unicorns, into the shade of a small tree at the face of the cliff. He kept his tail draped around her like a comforting arm around her shoulders, and when she settled down he curled up to face her. His massive eyes blinked slowly as he waited.

“This is my fault, that’s all.” She looked away. “If it weren’t for me, Nadra wouldn’t have Madeline. I risked everything for a hasty plan held together by guesses and wishes.”

“Ayda.” Cinder let out a harsh breath of air. “Use the excellent brain I know you have. Madeline agreed to come. I supported you. I believed it would work just as much as you did.”

“Fine, fine. That’s only part of it. There’s something I haven’t told you.” She recounted the scene in the tower with Madeline. The girl’s refusal to come. The words she had hurled at Ayda.

When she finished, Cinder didn’t say anything at first.

“Looking back, she’s right.” Ayda shuddered. “I wasn’t — I wasn’t thinking right, Cinder. From the moment I thought of the plan, all I cared about was making Nadra pay. Madeline was so close to going home, and then I persuaded her to come. She was a resource first, and my friend second.”

“You wanted to help your family.” Cinder’s voice was soft.

“Yes. But I mostly wanted revenge.” Ayda shook her head. “I keep getting it wrong, Cinder. First I ran away to Crescent Moon without even caring about what I was leaving. I hurt my parents and I didn’t care. It took my entire town being destroyed to get my head screwed on straight about that, and then I turned right around and did the same thing to Madeline.”

Madeline’s face, twisted in pain as it had been in that room in the tower, appeared in her mind’s eye, and Ayda squeezed her eyes shut to stave off the tears. “How did you do it?”

“What?”

“You stayed behind. You stayed, and I know how much you wanted to help. You’ve always had even more of a stake in this than I did.”

Cinder’s face creased, the fur rippling across his forehead. “It wasn’t easy.”

Ayda waiting.

“I think, for me, revenge… wasn’t why I needed to help. Ayda, every Shade has always known what we are — magical creatures with a built-in weakness. And we have always known that Nadra wasn’t truly gone. We don’t speak of it to others, usually, but in some ways, all this was an expected — if unlikely — future, and we learned to live with it.”

He shifted his weight, lifting his head off the ground. “So when the day came, when I learned that Lila and the kids were taken, and I — one of only a few hundred Shades — was still free, I knew I had to do more. Work harder. Make Nadra rue the day she overlooked me. I was in a unique position. I knew with my knowledge, I could figure out how to save my people.”

“But then you were taken off the research team.”

Cinder shrugged. “I guess that was my first test. I’ll… admit I didn’t react well.”

Ayda remembered how driven he had been afterwards, focusing on getting Madeline home to the exclusion of sleep and sanity. “And when you decided not to come with us?”

“I realized I had done what I could. I realized you didn’t need me. And I realized I trusted you and Madeline. I trusted that you would stop her, and far better than I could. And Ayda, I was right.”

“But it didn’t work.”

“From what you said, that was just the fault of the magic. You executed the plan flawlessly.”

Something warmed inside Ayda’s heart, and she smiled at Cinder’s praise for the first time in what felt like weeks.

Neither of them spoke for a time. Ayda leaned into Cinder, feeling his pulse throb through her. So steady, like a rock. So calm, even with everything that was happening. How could he just accept it all?

She knew what she needed to do. “I’m not going to get another chance, am I?” she whispered. “My part in this is over.”

“Yes.”

What would she have done, given another chance? Revenge held no savor for her now. And she knew with every part of her that there would be no convincing Madeline to turn back. They had chosen their paths, Ayda to defend her home and family, Madeline to defend hers. The cost? A friendship, never fully appreciated, broken and trampled behind them. And Ayda still could not blame her. That moment of startling revelation in that tower still reverberated through her; had it been Ayda’s family, she would have made Madeline’s choice.

In the end, her only positive role in this mess had been to bring Madeline to Crescent Moon. And she was finally at peace with that. She would not make the same mistakes again.

Ayda spent the day watching the preparations. Emerilla spent hours beside the pool, receiving questions and planning strategy. Twice, she called for Tel and Cinder, but not Ayda.

Without someone to talk to, Ayda found herself flying through the valley, drinking in its beauty. She longed for the forests, but they were outside of the border and unsafe. At first, she stayed low, skimming the top of the grass with her fingertips, but the first touch jolted up her arm with the wrongness of it. Their life force — it was gone. No. I’ve just lost the ability to feel it.

After that, Ayda kept to the skies, divorced from everything but the air. Below her, the unicorns were restless, conversing in small groups or practicing complicated spells. As the day wore on, she could tell that more and more had decided to come. They held their heads higher, stepped more firmly.

Sunset came in slow drips, and under the gathering darkness the unicorns began to settle a final time. In their cave, over the remains of a meager meal, Ayda said, “Both of you are going tomorrow?”

Cinder nodded. Something flickered in Tel’s eyes, but all he said was “Yes, of course.”

Ayda didn’t want to stop looking at them. She wanted to catch every mannerism, every flick of a tail or stomp of a hoof, just in case — in case she really would say the final goodbye tomorrow morning.

Cinder, as always, could read her too well. “I’m coming back, Ayda. We won’t leave you here alone.”

He made his bed closer to Ayda’s that night, as if guarding her against the morning.

The dark gathered. Moonrise came and went, and Ayda was no closer to falling asleep than she had been when she had first closed her eyes. Where was Madeline now? In her rooms? Walking with Nadra? She gave up on sleep, flying out of the cave and under the stars.

The night was cool and pleasant, cicadas chirping in her ears. The land was awash in various shades of nighttime grey. Ayda landed on a rock beside the pool and hugged her legs to her chest, folding her wings behind her and staring into the water.

The hole where her magic had been swelled inside of her. But that was easier to think about than what she had left behind in the tower, or what awaited Tel and Cinder and the unicorns… or anything, really

A hoofstep in the grass alerted Ayda half a second before the crystal voice sounded. “A fellow insomniac, I see.”

Ayda jerked her head up to see Emerilla herself a few paces away. Ayda hadn’t noticed that she was by the pool. She turned back to the water and shrugged.

“Would you consider staying up past moonhigh a habit, or an artifact of this particular night?” Emerilla asked softly.

“Just this night,” Ayda admitted.

“I have spent enough recent nights sleepless to fear that the condition is becoming chronic. An overfull mind leaves little room for rest.” She whickered softly.

“I know how that feels.” Ayda reached down and touched the water, watching the ripples cascade outwards.

“I thought you would.” Emerilla shook her head. “I fear for many of us, the destruction is so distant. We’re too isolated. But you…you’ve lost home, your family, your magic, and now your friend. Cinder told me your story.”

Was this supposed to make her feel better? Ayda’s throat tightened. “Madeline was my fault. I was blind.”

“In what way?”

“I used her. I broke a promise. But the details don’t matter. We’ve chosen different paths. There’s no going back.”

Something broke inside of her as she said it. She had accepted that she would have no further part in defeating Nadra. But to accept that Madeline was beyond her reach…

“Are you so sure of that?” Emerilla asked.

Maybe, just maybe, if she could talk to Madeline at the Well…

Ayda shook her head. “I guess I’m not. But I messed up so badly. I’m… I’m afraid.”

Emerilla didn’t answer at first. “Walk with me,” she finally said, turning away from the pool. “Or, well, fly, as the case may be.”

They followed the stream through the valley, passing white lumps on either side — sleeping unicorns curled tightly into a ball.

“When Nadra was born,” Emerilla began,“the elves lived in Neleluna. They were reclusive, limited in number, but with longer lifespans than humans or dryads. Nadra is human, but she grew up among elves — her parents traveled back and forth between your world and the elven capital. On one side, Nadra saw a small, outwardly perfect community, and on the other, the chaos and poverty that was your world. When she came into her own, she was brilliant and driven. And she was terrifying.”

Ayda blinked, confused. What did this have to do with anything she had said?

Emerilla continued. “She stole the talisman from us and used it much as she is using it now. At one point, she destroyed the elven city. Whether it was a failed experiment, or whether it was deliberate genocide, I don’t know. But she was growing more powerful and would listen to no authority. Especially after she created the Shades as own personal army.

“We watched her, but not closely enough. We received word that she had found her way to the Well and was going to experiment on it. I and some of the other unicorns went to confront her. She had just begun to cast her spell. I panicked. I cast my own spell with the help of the others — a last resort intended to create a pocket dimension and imprison Evota inside.”

She stopped walking, her ears laid back against her head. “It was chaos, a huge magical surge, and in that chaos, Earth’s link was severed. My fault for being hasty, or so I thought.”

“But you didn’t know what would happen,” Ayda protested.

“It didn’t matter. I had made a mistake that left hundreds separated from their families, and thousands more magicless. We drew into hiding. We were tired, and now we had to live with our shame.”

She tossed her mane at the memories. “We left Nadra where she was. Surely endless imprisonment was as good a punishment as any for what she had done. You know the story from there. She escaped, still in possession of the talisman, and started to gather power again. And I did not act. Until now. Do you see my point yet, young one?”

Ayda shook her head, but then it clicked. “You didn’t want to make a mistake again. So you didn’t want to get involved.”

Emerilla nodded. “I’ve lived a long time. I’ve made many mistakes, and, yet, I think this one is my greatest of all. I lead my people — I should have been stronger, quicker to act. Less paralyzed by the past.”

It was said gently, and Ayda understood.

“I want to come with you to the Well.” Decision made, Ayda lifted her head to take in the valley, the unicorns sleeping under the stars. “I want to find Madeline. I want to fix this.”

Emerilla’s eyes sparkled. “If that is what you need to do, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

A/N: I'm happy with the way the emotional stuff went in this chapter, but I'm not so sure about the pacing and logistics and setting. Thoughts?