“I don’t know,” Linford admitted. “I just pointed us at the Amazon.”
I cut him a look. “How do you even do that?”
“How do any of us do what we do?” he replied. “It’s a blessing.”
“Curse more like,” Seph mumbled.
“Not for our intentions. Everything is unfolding as it must,” my grandmother intoned, and my mouth twisted into a sneer at that.
Ever since she’d sacrificed her magic for the cause, she’d been even more irritating. Each step we took forward, a bewildering serenity overtook her, making her seem so fucking Zen that it just stressed me out all the more.
The waters weren’t helping solve that problem either. Not when the area we were standing on was narrow enough for me to see from one shoreline to another, and from there, I could even see another island ahead of me.
I wasn’t the only one discomforted. Seph turned in a circle and murmured, “We’re surrounded by small islets.”
“Where we stand is of no import,” Gabriella stated calmly.
“How do you know that?” I ground out, irritated all the more by her piety. “Did Trude tell you something she never told us? As far as I’m aware, we’re the ones who had a conversation with her. Not you.”
My grandmother guilelessly said, “She’s communicated many times with me over the years. Bursts of images here and there…” She closed her eyes. “I recognize this place. This is where we must begin.”
Feeling like a grump, I held out a hand to Seph. “The water ore, please?”
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the four pieces he’d been storing in there. Giving them to me, I stared at them, faintly mesmerized by the clean lines on either side of the ore. It was as precise as if they’d been shorn through with a laser.
Shaking my head at the sight, I leaned over and placed the ore on the ground, muttering, “In the Amazon, place the Water stone, to stir the beginnings of change.”
“She said you had to bloat the river,” Matt reminded me, coming over to place a hand on the bottom of my back. I wanted to lean into him so badly, but he’d played his part now, as had my other Virgo, and this was all down to me.
“How do you do that?” Dan asked, also stepping toward me.
“Rain?” Seph suggested, moving to stand beside Matt.
“It’s the only way, I guess,” I muttered, not entirely happy at the prospect of getting soaked through for nothing.
With a sigh, I let my magic spill from me, and only when it had touched all my mates and my grandparents—treacherous though they may be—I called on the rain.
It was weird because calling on it was simple, and yet so complicated too. I didn’t know how to seek out the lifegiving waters, but something in me did. Something that was Sol-granted and Gaia-gifted, something I no longer particularly wanted.
Still, I sought the rain and it found me.
Overhead, the relatively sunny day suddenly turned dark and overcast. The clouds began to churn, morphing from a bright white and sinking into a deep, gloomy gray. In seconds, the cheerful weather turned dusky and grim before the heavens opened and rain began to fall.
I stared up at the sky then down at the ore. With no goal in mind, other than to make the river bloat, I studied the silvery pieces but saw not even a glint of magic that was supposed to somehow redress the balance between Fae and Witch society.
A thought that made me roll my eyes.
How was I, standing here in the middle of the Amazon rainforest of all fucking places, supposed to do any of that?
Beneath us, the loam on the ground stayed dry, but the water began to make our area bog down with its weight. The chirps and songs from the birds disappeared too, and it was weird because I only realized just how much activity there’d been when the rain took over everything.
As I stared at the river, the whooshing sound made a reappearance, and I realized why the birds and local wildlife hadn’t been that loud to me… the Goddess was in my head once more.
Sandwiched by my males, I closed my eyes and tried to focus on what she was saying. It reminded me of when I was a kid and the station broke up, leaving a static screen of white and gray behind. There’d been that buzzing noise back then, but it was like someone had turned up the volume to the extent where I felt like I needed noise protection earphones on.
The pain that followed was like a punch to the temple. I cried out as I raised my hands to my ears, but it was no good. My men stopped me from staggering to the ground again, but the noise just wouldn’t stop.
“Something isn’t right!” Matt called out, his voice louder than the rain, but like a whisper over the sounds in my head.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Dan grated.
My eyelids began to flutter, almost as though they were trying to decide whether to help me pass out, but as they began to move, it was like an old-fashioned projector. With each flutter of my lashes, I saw an image.
The ore we’d gained from the witches had been shapeless to me. But in the image? They had a definite form.
Each piece had a distinct pattern on it, and when those patterns came together?
That was what brought light.
The noise stopped, and the sudden cessation made me feel like I was going deaf.
I stared up at my mates, and saw my grandparents hovering nearby with panic on their faces—undoubtedly for the ‘cause’ and not for me—and whispered, “The ore isn’t right.”
Matt scowled. “It has to be. Seph took Lars’ ore. He has the Water stone.”
“Yes, but it’s just…” I licked my lips, wondering how I could be surrounded by so much water and yet feel so parched.
Dan cupped my chin. “What is it?” To the others, he said, “Her eyes have turned silvery.”
Matt and Seph grabbed at my hands, squeezing them like his words meant something. Uncertainly, I frowned. “Silvery?”
“It started back at Lars’. They change color when you’re under—” He hesitated. “—pressure. Are you okay?”
Standing upright took more focus than it should have because I just wanted to melt into them and let this day be over, but when I was finally back on firm ground, feeling shaky for it too, I whispered, “This is wrong. Put all of the ore on the floor. Each one has a pattern on it.”
Reaching for the Air stone that I’d been carrying in my pocket ever since my grandmother had been purged, I tossed it on the ground while my Virgo did the same, but they scowled when they looked at the silvery rocks.
Dan was the first to comment on the obvious: “There’s nothing, Riel.”
“There is.” There had to be. I frowned at the shiny surface, not seeing what I had a moment before. “Dan, touch one of them.”
He shrugged but pressed a finger to a stone. When a little marking appeared, my eyes widened, and we all shuffled in place, excited at seeing something that hadn’t been there earlier.
“What is it?” Seph asked.
“I think it’s going to make up a rune.” I reached up and rubbed my temple again. “I-I saw a picture. It reminded me of the runes you were teaching us, Dan.”
“Trude said this was the place that required the Water stone,” Linford stated, his voice hushed with concentration. “The water rune is a like a lightning bolt on its side.”
“Touch them all, Dan. We need to find that symbol.”
He did as I asked, and we all stared when, on the final piece of ore, we found two inverted triangles set like a lightning bolt.
“Find the other three,” Linford told him, and Dan complied, reaching over to touch the other set of stones, not stopping until he found the three remaining pieces that fit this particular puzzle.
“One from each element,” Seph whispered as I picked up the last three Air stones and set them in my pocket, a move they copied.
“It fits,” Matt remarked with a gusty breath. “Now what?”
Nervously, and hoping Gaia wouldn’t start with her shit in my head again, I licked my lips. “Now we ca
ll on the rain again.”
❖
Seph
This time, when she called on the rain, it was like the storm of before was a little shower. Water flooded the skies until seeing into the distance became an impossibility.
The islets that had surrounded us might as well have not existed for all we could see of them, but what I did see was exactly how the river was bloating.
By Gaia’s grace, that was an understatement.
“Is that it? Do we get out of here now?”
Dan’s question was a valid one, and as he was staring at the river, which was beginning to roar now with its tide, I felt his concern as if it were my own.
“Look at the ore,” Matt directed, and I realized that Dan and I had been so focused on the river, we’d forgotten what we were here for.
Just as when Dan had touched them the first time and after, when he’d been seeking the pattern on them, the rune began to glimmer, but as we retracted the others, stuffing them in each of our pockets, the edges of the ore, so smooth and perfect, began glowing a bright red. The edges’ glow was so hot, in fact, that it made my eyes ache, but even as the pattern made itself known once more, I saw the four pieces of ore were drawn together like an unseen hand was bringing them into one unit.
With a clank, they united. A bolt of lightning soared overhead and a rumble of thunder had us all jerking in place. Just as we looked up, the newly formed ore surged upward too and, hovering about six feet above our heads, we watched as it pierced Riel’s magical protection and headed into the wilds of the storm above.
Except, instead of being lost to the rain, or flung into the river, the metal began to become thinner. Flatter. Almost as though the rain was beating it into a shape.
I frowned as the small ore that was the size of my palm became as flat as a pancake, but bigger even than that. Two feet in diameter, three. Four.
It seemed to hover at that point, quivering in the air as water still attacked it, and out of nowhere, the sun pierced through the clouds. The ray was so pure, so white, that I had to look away, and when I did?
I saw the river which had been about eight feet away was merely inches now. “Linford!” I screamed over the noise of the raging tide. “We have to get out of here.”
But his focus was elsewhere.
Overhead, the sun collided with the disc, creating a reflection of light so unadulterated that, once again, I was forced to look away.
“Linford!” Riel screamed, and I realized she’d seen the rise of the river too. She rushed over to him and grabbed him by the arms. “You have to take us from this place!”
He shook his head as though he were dazed, then, blinking at her, nodded.
And like that, the roar of the river was no more, the rain had stopped, that beam of light overhead had disappeared, and we were in the middle of a forest.
A different one this time. This wasn’t boggy or humid, and the chatter of the animals around us was dissimilar too.
Still surrounded by the pink haze of Riel’s magic, I ground out, “What the fuck just happened?”
Gabriella, with tears in her eyes, whispered, “It worked.”
“You didn’t think it would?” Riel snapped, her fury brimming from her, making the pink haze around us pulse with her temper.
“I wasn’t sure. How could I know?” the older woman sputtered, but that was no defense. Not for me or for Riel by the looks of it.
Riel’s mouth tightened into a line, and she turned away from the pair of them, dismissing them in deed rather than word. Focusing on us instead, she stated, “We have to assume we need to do the same thing here, right?”
“Well, yeah, but without the rain. ‘Help change grow,’ was what Trude said,” Dan commented warily, as he peered around us, trying to get a read on our location.
That was easier said than done, considering the density of the trees. There was little open space here, not unlike the islet we’d been on, but what was different was the lack of a river.
“What even is Suswa?” I asked Linford. When Riel had recited Trude’s words back to him, he’d nodded as though he knew Suswa well.
“It’s a special crater. It was a volcano once upon a time, but where the mouth was, it collapsed. Not just once, but twice. So it’s a crater within a crater.”
I frowned at that, but then, looking around the area, I had to admit it was fertile as all get out here. I knew that a large chunk of Africa was pure arable land, a lot of it wasn’t farmed thanks to drought, and plenty of it was farmed but actually leased to other nations. My business studies had even focused on how Saudi Arabia had leased a shit ton of agricultural land from the Sudan, but I had to admit to being surprised by just how fecund this place was.
“The Maasai guard this land. I know they set up sentries sometimes to make sure visiting tourists pay their tolls.”
“Pay their tolls?” Riel frowned. “You make them sound like trolls guarding bridges.”
He snorted. “You pay or else. They make a tidy sum on guiding tourists around the crater.”
“Why do people visit?”
Hitching a shoulder, he murmured, “Why does anyone visit anywhere? This is a beautiful spot. It’s as good a place as any to visit.”
Because I couldn’t exactly argue with that, I peered around and saw a family of fucking leopards watching us from their perch on a tree. Pointing to them, I murmured, “We have guests.”
“Technically,” Dan said with a small laugh, “we’re their guests. Let’s just hope it’s not for dinner.”
Riel grimaced. “Will my magic keep them off?” Her mouth softened when her gaze drifted over the family, and I couldn’t blame her—the cubs were cute as fuck.
“It kept off those storms. We’re all dry.”
“Big difference between the rain and a mama cat protecting her cubs.” She let a breath gust from her lips. “Let’s get the ball rolling.”
Pretty much as one, we set the ore on the ground. Peering at them as Dan crouched down and pressed a finger to each piece, Linford was the one who murmured, “Our earth rune is an upside-down triangle with a ‘T’ shape crossing through it.” He pointed to the ones he thought matched and said, “Them. Just turn them upside down.”
Riel cut him a look. “You’re sure?”
He shrugged. “As well as I can be.”
We each retrieved our ore and stored them in our pockets, then Riel, biting her lip all the while, pressed them closely together so there was a three-inch gap between each piece. Crouching down with her knees in the ashy soil, she stared up at us and muttered, “The only way I can grow something is to literally grow something.”
“You can bring life, Riel. Create a seed and have it grow.”
I frowned at her grandmother. “You want her to grow a plant?”
Gabriella shrugged. “Or a tree. Whichever she feels best. Go with your instincts, Riel.”
Unsurprisingly, she huffed at that. I didn’t think Riel had ever been a particular fan of kismet, and our recent past didn’t exactly seem to have made her appreciate it all the more.
She opened her palm, closed her eyes, then sucked down a breath of air. The next time she opened them, there was a single seed in her hand. Her Virgo all grinned at one another, but her grandparents were goggle-eyed at the sight. Considering what Riel had just done was pretty much impossible, their pride was understandable. Sure, we’d seen her create daisies and a tarantula—cue grimace—but it was still a miracle to behold.
She tucked the seed into the soil and hovered a hand over it. This time, it wasn’t as clear as it was in the Amazon. The sky didn’t turn from a cheery blue to a grim gray, and no rain fell in response to her magic. As she crouched there, shrouded in the pink haze of her power, nothing seemed to be happening.
Nothing at all.
Then, out of nowhere, a tiny sprout appeared through the soil. Bright green and gleaming with new life, it began to move. I’d seen videos of bamboo shooting upward, growing fast enough for the eye
to behold, and this was that, just turbocharged.
As the sprout grew, the plant morphed. The stem grew thicker, wider. Broad enough to connect the four ores with its reach. As it shot up, the ore moved with it, and though I reached out to move them out of the way, Gabriella grabbed my hand and stated, “No. This is the way forward.”
With the plant or tree or whatever the Sol it was growing nice and healthily, Riel got to her feet and straightened. She tipped her head back as the tree began to surge upward, moving faster now that the ore were lodged into its stem.
At a similar height to the Water stone, the tree came to a halt about twelve feet from the ground. The ore began to glow once more, the seams a bright red that, unsurprisingly, cleaved through the tree until they were linked together. Before our very eyes, the damn tree carried on growing, except, instead of growing up, it grew out. Branches appeared, leaves morphed into being, and with it, they shrouded the silver ore… until they did as the rain had with the other. Somehow, the branches encouraged the disc to grow, to widen until the tree’s canopy had a broad circumference, about thirty feet across.
And just as that happened, the tree itself began to glow, burning hotly, brighter and brighter, as bright as the laser light of earlier, and in a flash, the tree was no more. Ruptured apart as it turned to dust, covering us in the ashy loam.
“Bleugh,” Riel spluttered, dragging her hands over her face to get rid of the ash. The rest of us did the same, leaving behind dusty streaks on our faces. Truth was, we were more focused on that than on what was going on above us. Wasn’t difficult to blame us considering I felt like I had half a ton of crap in my eyes.
“Your magic doesn’t stop dust,” Dan grumbled, but his words came to an abrupt halt. “Hope it stops leopards though.”
I stilled, peering in the same direction as him.
“Nice, kitty kitty,” he cooed, eying the leopards who, save for the cubs, were standing a few feet away now, hissing at us.
When I reasoned that a tree had just shot up out of nowhere and then had disappeared in the blink of an eye, in their paws, I’d have been feeling pretty gnarly too. Especially with cubs nearby.
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 60
