Heart of Farellah: Book 3

by Brindi Quinn

  “My, my, I see we’re all alive and we-” He paused to taunt Nyte. “What? Upset, are we, Elf? I simply wanted the Pure Heart to experience paradise while we were in paradise. Fitting, don’t you think?”

  For the second time, Nyte didn’t get angry. He didn’t lash out, and he didn’t overreact. The corner of his mouth just sort of twitched into a cool smirk. Then he calmly readied his hands for a spell.

  “It is not time for that, Cousin!” Rend pushed them down. “Come. Let us see where we have landed.” She glared at Ardette and added, “We have already lost more time than we can spare.”

  Ardette smiled handsomely.

  I followed her lead and finally inspected the surroundings of the other side of the portal. The space was small and gray and squishy. Kantú would have loved it for sure. Were we technically at the bottom of the well? I looked up, but there was no sunny opening to be found, just a fuzzy sort of gray.

  “Is this it?” sniffed Ardette, not impressed. “The realm? I’d thought those ostentatious angels would’ve had more flair.”

  “Of course it is not ‘it’!” seethed Rend. “This must be . . .” But she had nothing to finish with. There was, however, someone that did.

  “A transitional point, I think!” Darch clapped merrily. “Between the two planes!”

  “You think?” I said through tight, angry teeth. I was still far from pleased with the conspiring Magir.

  Darch again took to examining his sleeve. I’ll bet he was feeling pretty relieved that he’d been saved from my scolding by Ardette’s near-crush.

  Darch . . . unnnnngh!

  “How do we escape it?” asked Nyte. “Are you aware of the way out?”

  Darch looked up and gestured to one of the small room’s corners. “Here. Through here.”

  “Are you sure?” said Nyte. “It does not appear to be an outlet.”

  It was a valid concern. From what I could see, there was no door or window or opening of any sort anywhere. We were in a colorless box, and that corner looked to be just that. A corner.

  “Trust me.” Darch pointed at his chest with his thumb. “I can sense these things.”

  Yeah, you sure can sense things, but you still don’t feel it necessary to warn a person when they’re about to be stranded with a dangerous-! There I went again – thinking of Ardette as ‘dangerous’. I had to stop doing that.

  “Are you not coming? This is no time to let your mind be idle! Try to maintain some sort of conscious thought, Sape! I know it is difficult for someone of your disposition, but-”

  “Yeah, yeah. I got it. Sorry.”

  “You have not need to apologize,” said Nyte. He lowered his voice. “Rend was also troubled over your wellbeing in your absence. That is why her manner is foul.”

  It was meant for only me, but Rend heard it anyway. Of course she would. She stiffened, shot Nyte a stabbing glare of death, and turned after Darch.

  Nyte crossed his arms and shook his head. He was disapproving, but also a little amused.

  Rend had been troubled? Honestly, I couldn’t imagine her worrying about me. What did she even think of me at this point, really? It was too hard for me to read her to tell. The hardest of any of my guardians. If only there was some way for me to see the cold Elf as Nyte saw her. I knew a deeper part existed, but it was so well hidden – or maybe I was just so dense – that it had never become apparent to me, and any glimpses I’d caught had been quickly lost to the hours of hard-shelled unpleasantness. How long ago had it been when I’d wondered whether she and I would ever become friends?

  Friends? That was a joke, but at least she was tolerable now. At least she didn’t seem to have as intense of a hatred for me as she first had.

  “Right here, guys! Gather around!” prodded Darch.

  I found Nyte’s hand and we followed Darch. I felt silly walking into what was clearly just a corner, certain we’d all just accumulate into a clump of trapped idiots pressing against each other. But it wasn’t so. The corner wasn’t a corner. Not really. We walked into it, and the grayness expanded into a small tunnel-like hallway. It was another one of those things that my other-realmly eyes couldn’t quite keep up with or understand.

  “See!” said Darch. “See, Aura! Isn’t that great?”

  Ah. So that’s what he was hoping. That he’d be able to get back into my good graces by proving his worthiness.

  “Oh,” I said plainly. “So there was something here.”

  He let out a small, Kantú-like whine.

  But though I’d played blasé, the whole thing was impressive. That spot had looked just like a normal, uneventful corner until we were right upon it. Huh. Wow. I didn’t mean to let it show, but I was too easy to read. Darch caught my awe and reverted to jolly.

  Pressing onward, we filed into the tunnel. We continued that way, close together and stumbling like one entity, until we reached the end.

  The end was solid. A gray wall.

  Darch gave it a tap. “Huh. Well, that’s weird.”

  “Oh? What, Darch, Magir skills not up to par? My, my, what a sha-”

  Ardette was forced to eat his words, however, when Darch rammed his shoulder hard against the solid spot, and sent it flying forward. The wall broke from the tunnel and disappeared with a pop.

  “Well, what do you know? That’s just superb!”

  “And just why are you acting so surprised?” said Ardette darkly. “You idiot.”

  Darch stumbled out of the grayness and into a place. It was a place that looked somewhat normal . . . . . . . except for the fact that there was no ground. There was only cloud-dotted sky. But somehow it was possible to tell which part of the ‘sky’ was the ground and which part was the heavens. Darch didn’t fall through the open air, but stood atop it, as though there were a floor beneath his feet.

  “Yay!” he said. “We’re here!”

  Only, his voice didn’t come out like it normally would have. Instead, his words were slow. But not only were his words lagging, his whole spectrum of motions, from his blinking to his hopping, were much, much slower than they should’ve been. I noticed it only until I stumbled out into the place after him.

  At that point, Darch’s movements didn’t seem very slow at all. They seemed to match my own, which were, as far as I could tell, at normal speed. However, Nyte next called something from the edge of the gray tunnel that made me again question my state of being.

  “What is happening to you two?” And his voice was fast. So fast, that I could barely understand it.

  “Whoa! What’s going on, Darch?”

  Darch was delighted that I’d turned to him for his opinion on the matter. He probably thought it meant that I’d forgiven him for any former transgressions, namely his Ardette-aided scheming.

  Tch. Darch.

  He was right. I couldn’t stay upset with him for very long.

  “I think that the angels are under different existential conditions than us. Their property of speed, or rate of happening, is completely beyond what we’re used to. That means we’ll probably look really, really slow to them!”

  “Seriously? But then, how are we supposed to interact with them?”

  “Not like they’ll pay us any mind anyway!” said a hyper-speed Ardette.

  “Come out here,” I said, laughing because his voice was even higher in pitch than Toll Garrich’s, the highest-pitched Squirrelean I’d ever encountered. “It’s hard to understand you like that.”

  “What? You like it, do you? Well then, I think I’ll continue to ramble. Let’s see here. Did I ever tell you about that one time at Druelca when I skipped out on guard duty to have a secret rendezvous with one of our Sapian prisoners? She was quite the little imp.”

  “What?! You mean you-”

  “Are those the sorts of thoughts you’re harboring, my pit? How perverse of you. No, nothing like that, I’m afraid. Those Druelcan dogs were all quite puzzled when the imp managed to escape right under their noses. In fact, it was quite a problem. Disappear
ing prisoners somehow finding a way out of the fortress. It’s a wonder they never suspected a mole’s involvement.”

  Ardette stumbled out of the tunnel. Rather, Rend gave him a hard push. Actually, I was kind of surprised how long she’d allowed him to clog up the opening. Nyte and Rend followed him out.

  “I thought you told us that all of the prisoners were laymen Elves!” I said.

  “Of course I would say something like that to make you feel better.” His voice was normal again. “I wasn’t lying when I said that Illuma was the only songstress. The lie was that she wasn’t the only Sape. No, there were quite a few actually. Seems the devils were experimenting with turning regular Sapes into songstresses.”

  “That’s impossible. Songstresses are determined by the Creator.”

  “Tell that to them. Oh wait. You can’t. They’re all dead now, aren’t they?”

  “That means the prisoners too . . .”

  “Shh. Block thoughts like those, would you? Imagine they all ran away to safety.”

  I felt sick, having just made such a disgusting realization. Thankfully, Rend distracted me by stomping her foot several times against whatever it was that we were standing on. Ground? Clear air ground?

  “Is this entire ‘realm’ sky?” she said. “How is it that we are suspended? How is it that we are not falling?”

  Nodding, Nyte squatted to run his hand along the ground. “Indeed, the floor feels solid, does it not?”

  “That’s because it is solid,” explained Ardette. “There are still the same boundaries here. They’re just altered a bit, that’s all.”

  I squinted at him. “And you know this because you’re . . . ? Fill in the blank. Because you’re a . . . ? No? A dra-?”

  “Cute,” he said curtly.

  I was sort of kidding, but I also sort of wasn’t. There was no way Ardette was actually a dragon. Those were extinct, and I’d seen what the bones of a dragon were like, but then . . . what was he?

  “Ah, a new secret to tantalize you with, have I? We both know how delightful the last one turned out.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Aura, come this way.” Nyte called me from Ardette.

  It was all so weird. Walking on the air like it was solid. Like there was a clear covering keeping us from falling through the sky. I squatted next to Nyte and looked below me. There was nothing but more sky, as far as I could tell. And the strangest part was that I could still feel the wind and taste the air coming up from below. It still tasted like sky, even though it held us up.

  “This is inconceivable, is it not?” said Nyte, amazed.

  “It is a divine . . .” but Rend couldn’t’ finish her sentence. For someone so taken with ‘holy’ things, this experience was maybe even more miraculous for her than it was for the rest of us. That rare expression of serenity was back; that peacefulness that was sparked by so very few things.

  “So, is this the sky above the Westerlands? Like, if we were to take the wind buggy high into the air, would we encounter this place?” I asked.

  “Nope!” said Darch. “This is a parallel world. It exists alongside our own. It’s impossible to reach . . . except by the means we used, of course!”

  I was still crouched with Nyte. I’d been looking only down, but I now glanced up. I noticed that the ‘up’ sky was darker than the ‘down’ sky. Maybe that’s how we’d been able to discern which way was which. Beyond that sky there was distant space that was creating that darkening affect. Did that mean that the stars would be visible at night too? Was this the same space I’d stared into so many times from the ground? I dropped my analyzing eyes to the horizon.

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s that?”

  “What?” asked Nyte.

  “Over there.” I pointed to a small mound of earth floating between the clouds.

  “Ah, I see it. It is . . . dirt? And grass?”

  “Let’s go check it out!” Darch hurried to inspect it.

  It was an earthy mound of dirt and grass, large enough for one person to stand on comfortably.

  “What is it for?” asked Rend.

  “Hmm.” Darch bent down and placed a hand on the mass. “Decoration?”

  “That is absurd!”

  “Well, I don’t really know, then. Do you?”

  “Me? Why, pray tell, would I know?!”

  “It is a path,” said Nyte. “See? There is another just there.” He pointed.

  There was another. And another beyond that. He was right. They were forming a path to somewhere.

  “Well, what do you think?” I said. “Should we follow it? We don’t really know what we’re doing, right? Should we just try to run into an angel or someone and hope that they can help give us some direction? . . . Or-” – that reminded me of something – “Wait! What happens when we see an angel? Will it attack us!?”

  “No,” said Ardette. “We’re much like ants to them. They’ll pay us no mind.”

  “Are you sure they won’t pay you mind, Ardetto?” said Darch.

  “Why would they?”

  Darch slyly pushed up his spectacles, which were slowly making their way down his nose, and answered, “Because you’re kind of gaudy.”

  “Pfff!” Had I been eating something, I would have spit it out.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” retorted Ardette in a drone. “Darch, you’re really quite-”

  “Yes, Ardette,” said Nyte, also stifling an escaping snigger, “I am in agreement that it would be best for you to attempt to contain your flamboyancy.”

  “Oh, please. If anyone here is flamboyant it’s him.” Ardette motioned to Darch, who’d happily taken to hopping from mound to mound.

  “What are you guys waiting for? Let’s go!”

  Following his lead, we walked single-file along the series of raised land spots. It was odd to see masses of land raised within the sky, but the markers were more comfortable to walk along than the illusionary floor because they offered a sense of grounding even though I couldn’t get over the feeling that, should I happen to teeter off the edge, I might go plummeting through the vast expanse of ‘down’ sky.

  “So, do you think this maybe takes us to like a town or something?” I asked in the hopes of distracting myself from that image.

  “An angel village?” Ardette wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Would we be so lucky?”

  “Well, sure. Then I might be able to catch the interest of one-”

  “Never! I will not allow you to do something so repulsive! Catch an interest? You mean make a pact? Ugh. What a joke. It’ll steal the song from your lungs without thinking twice.”

  “Ardetto, you know that’s not true,” said Darch.

  “Well then, why hasn’t one of them offered yet? Hm? Why hasn’t one of those ‘oh holy ones’ come to save the day? They’d rather just let their brother run amok creating havoc?”

  “Simple!” Darch raised a finger. “Angels stay out of the world’s affairs unless under special assignment from the Creator.”

  “What?” I said. Did that mean . . . “Lusafael’s on assignment!?” Could that be possible?! If so, then what did that say about the-

  “No!” Ardette sighed out of annoyance. “He’s a rogue angel, of course.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Still hoping to find one to help you? Ha! Good luck.”

  I was getting angry now. “Why are you SO incredibly bitter?” I lashed. “You hate ‘certain’ angels? Well what the hell does that mean?!”

  “Aura,” said Nyte, and he was calm. “Do not let him upset you.”

  “Good,” said Ardette. “You deal with her awhile, Elf.” Without a second look, he dismissed me with the back of his hand and stormed ahead.

  “Uh!” How rude.

  “Actually, Nyte,” said Darch, backtracking. “Would it be okay if I dealt with her?”

  “Dealt with her?” Nyte defensively stepped in front of me.

  “Er- that came out kind of bad.” Darch rubbed his chin. “What I mean is, can talk to
you, Aura? Privately?”

  I knew that look. That was the look of a Magir feeling chatty. I was certain to find out something if I agreed. So that’s what I did. And I did with great eagerness. “Sure!”

  “Do not wander too far behind,” said Nyte. “Once you are done, Miss Havoc, would you consent to accompanying me once more?”

  “Of course, Nyte. I will ‘consent’.” I grinned. Consent? Who says that? I watched him leap away. But while I was watching him, Darch was watching me.

  “I’m glad that you love him still,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Believe me, things would have been a LOT easier if the emulator pendant had been the only thing binding you two. Then you wouldn’t have had to make a choice. But the fact that you did have to choose just makes your feelings for Nyte so much more prevailing.” He smiled cutely. “It’s very romantic.”

  That made my guilt flair up.

  “But Darch . . .” I let my eyes fall. “I’m sure you can tell anyway, so I’m just going to say it. I’m still harboring those feelings.”

  Darch nodded sympathetically. “I know. That’s the downside to having a fate like yours. It’s hard to discern what’s meant for now. You’ll clear it all up one day!”

  “Meant for now?”

  “But that’s really not for me to say.”

  “What?! Then why did you-”

  “Long ago there was a war between the angels and the dragons,” he said, rapidly changing the topic.

  “So Ardette is a dragon?” I don’t know why I was even asking, though. I didn’t actually believe something like that could be possible.

  Darch ignored the question. “At the time of the Making, before the new races were created, there existed only dragons and angels. The dragons were representatives of the darkness. The angels were representatives of the light. Two opposing forces, both equally strong.

  “As you can imagine, because of their differences, there was terrible quarreling that occurred. The angels and dragons battled for a long time – though time as we know it had not yet been established – and in the end, the dragons lost.”

  “Lost?” I said. “So then they formed a treaty of surrender or . . .?”

  Darch shook his head. “At that time, the angels still had the power of song on their side, so the dragons were completely defeated. Wiped out. Their corpses scattered around the land. As a punishment for this crime, the Creator tore the gift of song from the angels and gave it to a race he found more worthy. That was the birth of the songstresses.