by Halie Fewkes
Even though Allie was still convulsing, she had almost pulled herself to her knees to glare through a tangle of hair. “You’ll die for this, Sav,” she told the spiky-haired Escali before coughing a dark red substance onto the ground.
The monster broke a wicked grin and stooped to tell Allie, “I probably will. But it won’t be at your hands.”
He swiftly kicked Allie in the stomach and then jerked his head back to pierce Ebby with his cloudy eyes.
Then the Escali ripped her away from Ratuan.
Ebby clawed at the air as he bolted into the trees with her in tow. She screamed as loud as her lungs would allow. She screamed again as leaves and ferns slapped at the bottoms of her feet, then she twisted and kicked and tried to conjure another flame to burn him. The wind she faced from their sheer speed prevented any more fire, but she shrieked and flailed until her cries turned into sobbing coughs.
Twenty minutes ago she had been so happy, torn only by the decision of where to live and how to gain attention. Now she wished she could end her life with a thought so she wouldn’t have to see how the Escalis would end it. She nuzzled her face into the neck of her gigantic painted tunic and just tried to detach herself, to let somebody else face the fear, the pain, the grief that overwhelmed her. This somebody was going to die a horrible death, and Ebby wanted to be far away when it happened.
Escalis were built to run, fight, and kill, so they quickly covered ground that would have taken Ebby’s caravan three days to cross.
A third brute appeared in the air in front of them, forcing Ebby’s attackers to a rough stop, so sudden that it knocked the wind from her lungs. This one had the same aggressive monstrous features, and his hair flowed down his back in the same hue as theirs, three shades darker than black.
His voice was deep and vicious, but Ebby didn’t hear what he said because she was shocked to feel herself hit the ground. The Escalis were angry with each other, and she was the reason. This third monster wanted her.
Too terrified to get up and run, Ebby crawled away from them and huddled against the large roots of an aging tree, hoping that if a conflict was about to ignite, she wouldn’t be hurt.
When she peeked up at them, she found magic in the hands of the new Escali, a deep green glow being held toward her.
No.
Only one Escali could use magic.
This couldn’t be him.
But his mastery became undeniable as the entire forest darkened into oppressive cave walls. Ebby was now huddled alone on a grey-stone floor where no one could hear her grief.
She pushed herself into the nearest corner and her cries came out as screams as she pounded small hands onto the rough stone. She tried to release a shriek of denial, or resistance, or something helpful. Ebby heaved air out of her body like a poison and could barely choke down a single breath to replenish it. If she had eaten anything during the day, she would have thrown it all up by now.
Ratuan would never climb another tree. He could never beat her in another game of chess, and the magic of holding his hand would never make her feel warm or fuzzy, ever again.
A soul-stifling cloud of despair sapped the strength from her entire body, smothering her will to live as it spread pain through every limb.
Her cries became weaker and hushed as she keeled onto her side and pulled her tunic over her face. The smell of dried berries and flower petals, crushed into the sunset on her clothes, only served to mock her now. How could she ever, in a hundred stupid lifetimes, have cared about a painted tunic?
Her lungs finally gulped in a full breath which she wasted on her next wail of anguish, a sound more pathetic than a wounded and pleading animal. Ebby tried to pull it together, to hold perfectly still and think through a clear string of thoughts. With her sanity on the brink of collapsing, she found herself focusing on stories Reso used to tell her every night.
In his soft bed-time voice, he’d narrated endless legends of the courageous Sir Avery, the only person in the world who could stand up to Prince Avalask. Remembering Reso’s soothing voice helped her take a stuttered breath, but she knew the odds of Sir Avery showing up. He wouldn’t.
Her existence depended on escaping in a hurry, but when she pulled the collar of her tunic down below her eyes, she found that the stone room didn’t contain a single door or even a window. All it held was a table in the middle, shelves along one wall holding up twisted black-glass artwork, and a cold fireplace covered by a metal grate. Ebby brought a small flame to her hands and tried to gather her courage. Surely the fireplace vented to the surface of the world. It was her only way out.
She had nothing left to battle her paralyzing fear, no hope to hold onto except her own continued existence. So getting to her feet was an accomplishment worthy of song and praise, because it was proof that her life was still worth enough to fight for.
She approached the fireplace until she heard a tiny crunch behind the dense metal grate, full of tiny holes she couldn’t see through. Ebby stopped in terror and waited… waited… waited until she could finally convince herself the sound had been imagined, then she reached a shaking hand to pull it aside.
The grate snapped back against the fireplace, startling her. “Stay away!” a frightened voice said from inside, perhaps a girl, or a boy no older than she was. Ebby could hardly believe it, and felt a sense of what might be called relief. Here was hope, hope that she might have somebody to hold onto when the Escalis came for her.
“You can… c-come out,” Ebby whispered, wiping her eyes. “I’m… not…” her throat constricted around her reassurance.
“I told you to get back!”
Ebby was pretty sure the voice was a boy’s. She wanted him to know she wasn’t an Escali, so she slipped all ten fingers through small holes in the metal to tug the whole thing away. With her forehead pressed against the mantle, she only needed to crack it open to see inside, but the boy was struggling to hold it closed. As soon as she wedged the grate open and the light of the room reached him, a startling hiss greeted her. Ebby jerked back and fell on her rear as the grate snapped shut again. The Escali hiding inside the fireplace was young, perhaps just a little older than she was, but definitely a vile monster. He might have even had the royally black hair, but she wasn’t positive.
Ebby scrambled back to her corner in a heartbeat — which was saying something, considering how fast her heart was beating — and wished she had never left. She hunkered down as fresh tears plagued her eyes, not wanting to think about why he was in the room with her. She knew what Escalis ate to survive, and could only pray she would at least be dead before they started on her.
A pair of Epic’s feet landed next to the table, and Ebby tucked her head beneath her arms to sob against her legs.
“Don’t be afraid of me. I’m all the way over here,” he said. He was trying to speak softly, but the depth of his terrifying voice just couldn’t be softened. Ebby had only felt fear like this once before in her life, attacking her with a pain worse than her coming death. She gasped small breaths, not knowing which would be her last, and cringed as she heard him approach.
Death felt like a gentle hand on her shoulder, and her panic evaporated in the next second, leaving her as calm as the sleeping. Magic. It was some sort of calming magic. And the hand on her shoulder was real.
A mere arm’s length from her face, the Epic said, “You’re ok, Ebby, you’re safe here. I just need you to listen. Alright?”
Ebby took a steady breath and hiccupped as her core relaxed into less pain. Without her emotions terrorizing her, she was able to wipe the tears from her stinging eyes and lift her chin to see him.
The room’s light had visibly dimmed to accommodate the black of Prince Avalask’s flowing hair, and he might have been considered handsome if his green eyes didn’t have the cloudy quality of a nightmare. “Do you know who I am?” he asked without a trace of a growl in his voice.
She nodded, and he slowly took his hand off her shoulder before kneeling to her level. E
bby hiccupped again and wondered how he could be speaking her language.
“It comes with being an Epic,” he told her. “We can speak all languages.”
He was reading her thoughts!
He let out a sigh, and said, “Sorry. It’s a hard habit to break.”
Without emotions to plague her, Ebby thought deliberately about Margaret and Ratuan’s deaths so the mind reader would have to see them. “I am so truly sorry,” he said, his eyes seeming to mean it. “Nobody was supposed to die getting you here. I promise, my brothers are in for more trouble than you know for killing Margaret.”
As Prince Avalask spoke, the small Escali edged out of the fireplace and darted behind him. “I see the two of you haven’t met. Vack, why don’t you say hello to Ebby?”
She heard a desperate whisper from behind the Epic. “Get me out of here.”
“Believe me, son, she’s more afraid of you than you are of her. But you’ll get used to her. You’ll both be here for a while.”
No no no no no. Prince Avalask’s son? His firstborn son?
The kid kept a tight hold on his father as he peaked around to see Ebby, revealing nothing more than a messy burst of royally black hair on his head and thick black gloves on his hands.
“Ebby, I don’t have a lot of time to talk, and I don’t want to keep any secrets from you,” Prince Avalask said. “You’ve assumed correctly. Vack is the next Escali Epic.”
Ebby couldn’t feel terror at the moment, but she felt nausea at the realization of just who was in front of her.
“I know the Humans haven’t announced their new Epic yet, and I want you to know why. Sir Avery had a daughter, Ebby. After five generations of boys for Epics, you’re the very first girl, and Sir Avery did absolutely everything in his power to hide you. That’s why you never met him, and that’s why you move around so often, always staying with families more powerful than you know.”
Ebby turned to the side and began retching until Prince Avalask set his hand back on her shoulder and the desire to purge herself receded, leaving only stupefied shock.
But she knew she was dreaming. She was not the great Sir Avery’s daughter.
“I know this is hard to hear, especially right now, but this is why you’re here,” Prince Avalask said. “I’ve been looking for you since the day you were born.”
Ebby didn’t want to listen further. This was madness. Absolute insanity.
“And I’m…” Prince Avalask looked at his hands as though his words had slipped through them. “I’m… sorry to do this to you, but you’re going to grow up to be very powerful, Ebby. If you spend the rest of your life battling Vack, like every Human and Escali Epic before you, then it’s all a waste. I brought you here because I want the two of you to meet now, before the world spoils you both. Because if you can somehow manage to get along, the two of you could change everything.”
Ebby wasn’t stupid. If any of this Epic bogus was true, then she knew exactly why she was here. They were going to hurt her — do things to make her forget who she was. If Prince Avalask could force her to join them, then the Escalis would have three Epics who could topple buildings, set fields ablaze, cause death with a snap of their fingers… And Humanity would only have one.
She promised herself on the spot that she would never let that happen. No amount of brain washing would ever convince her to join the Escalis, not if she kept a tight hold on her memory of Ratuan and Margaret.
“Ratuan isn’t dead yet,” Prince Avalask said.
Yet?
Oh no. No. Her false calm exploded into fear, and she stuttered, “Please help him?” She was stuck. Even if she wasn’t stuck, she wasn’t an Epic yet. She could barely light a pinecone on fire.
“I will,” Prince Avalask said, rising to his full height. “I’ll go take care of Ratuan, but please find a way to get along while I’m gone. Just… try. And no more hiding in the fireplace.”
The metal grate fused itself to the nook in the wall, destroying its role as a sanctuary. Then Prince Avalask leapt into the air and disappeared from between the two kids.
Ebby caught a full look at Vack before he dashed into the farthest corner of the room and hunkered down. His green eyes weren’t as frighteningly cloudy as his father’s, but his teeth were still sharp and he still had spikes of bone growing from his elbows. They probably weren’t any longer than her fingers, but who cared?
Ebby couldn’t imagine why Vack was acting as though he was afraid of her. There was nothing in the world she could do to harm him, short of attempting to light him on fire. If he was an Epic though, he would have no problem putting out the small flames she could conjure and proceeding to kill her. She was not going to try to initiate conflict with him. She wasn’t about to initiate any form of contact.
She had to get away from the Escalis. The world might actually depend on it.
Without Prince Avalask’s presence, she relapsed into bawling, and hot tears ran from her eyes as she scooted carefully toward the fireplace.
Vack stayed exactly opposite her in the room, keeping the greatest distance possible between them, and when Ebby finally reached her only hope of escape, she didn’t know what to do. It had to vent to the surface. Perhaps she could melt enough of the grate away to get through and crawl out?
Ebby pressed her hands against the cold metal and felt it heat beneath her touch. She had to pull her hands back as it became searing hot, and an orange glow began to creep into the polished shine as she focused. It got hotter and hotter as she felt a mocking scorn from across the room.
Ebby froze, trying to make sure she wasn’t imagining the connection with Vack. And now he thought she was stupid for questioning such a thing when she was an Epic.
Ebby didn’t want to turn her puffy eyes toward him, and kept them on the metal grate as he said, “You’re trying to melt the grate to a fireplace. That’s what it’s there for. To not melt.”
Nobody had ever spoken to her so scathingly in her life, and she crouched down to slump against the wall. Her situation was hopeless, and her only idea was even foolish to an Escali.
As more tears poured from her eyes, she was also beginning to realize rasping thirst clinging to her dry throat. She hated the fact that something as petty as thirst could bother her now. Nevertheless, now that she faced the middle of the room, she saw two bowls of water and a loaf of bread on the central table. She had no idea how long they’d been sitting.
She didn’t want to approach the table or be any closer to Vack than necessary, plus if she really was an Epic, she should be able to easily levitate something across the room, right? She had to figure out if she had any other powers to aid her escape anyway.
Ebby reached her hands toward one of the bowls of water and willed for it to come to her. She saw it twitch feebly, truly shocked to see it react at all. She tried again, concentrating with all her might, and the clay bowl toppled off the table, breaking into three pieces on the floor.
Ebby bit her lip and didn’t want to try again with the second bowl. What if she spilled that one too? She was beyond thirsty, so she moved one leg slightly in front of her and slowly shifted her weight onto her feet, watching for a reaction from Vack across the room. He had noticed, but he wasn’t doing anything in response.
As Ebby crept forward, she noticed something nagging at her mind. Hungry. So very hungry. No, she wasn’t hungry, she was thirsty. The idea fluttered around her feelings until she noticed Vack watching her intently, afraid she was going to run off with the bread, but too afraid to stop her.
Ebby decided to extend a gesture of peace. Maybe Escalis could also eat bread along with their… horrific diet. She picked it up with a shaking hand and attempted to levitate it toward him, but the loaf burst into flames in her hands, and Vack gasped in outrage.
She was just about to explain that she hadn’t meant to light it on fire when she heard him growl, and the bowl of water in her hands froze into a solid block. Vack must have been able to hear her thirsty thoughts
too.
“Fine, you can have it,” she said throwing the bowl over to him in defeat. She meant for it to land at his feet and make him feel guilty, but it exploded on the wall behind him instead, thrown with a force she hadn’t known she possessed. Vack’s wide eyes screamed ‘madwoman!’ as Ebby remembered, oh yeah, extreme strength was a mage power.
She was about to apologize, but Vack yanked his black gloves off to retaliate. He could actually levitate quite well and sent the shattered ice and bowl shards zooming toward her. Ebby didn’t know what power she used to deflect them, but when she stuck her hands out, they slammed into the wall beside her, dislodging the shelf of art.
The twisted glass figurines exploded into sharp shards, skittering to a stop all across the stone floor as the shelf clattered loudly to the ground.
Vack charged toward the middle of the room, and Ebby fled to the fallen shelf, picking it up to shield herself as Vack upended the table to hide behind. The attacks ceased for a moment as Ebby thought quickly. What other mage powers did she know of?
Invisibility. She willed for it to happen, then saw herself flicker a few times. After a little more concentration, she disappeared altogether to her great relief. She set her shelf-shield down, but Vack was perfectly concealed behind his overturned table. Ebby edged slowly around Vack’s hideout, positive he couldn’t see her, and then felt her stomach drop when she didn’t see him on the other side either. Was he invisible too, stalking her at that very moment?
Fear fluttered through her like when she was alone in the dark. She didn’t know how to locate people, so she tried to listen for Vack’s thoughts instead.
She caught them, drifting in the air, and Vack’s feelings were so intriguing that Ebby lost her concentration on staying invisible and reappeared. He was petrified, afraid of more than just her now. He was afraid of falling… Of falling?
Ebby looked up and saw Vack clinging to the ceiling high above her.
“How did you get up there?” She realized she had spoken aloud after it was too late.
