by Blair Drake
This Zora, who looked like she'd gotten the fright of her life, was strangely vulnerable.
"Come on, Princess Hard-Ass." Elijah slung her arm over his shoulders. "Don't tell me a little wyvern frightened you. I thought you were made of sterner stuff than that."
Zora punched him in the ribs. He was pretty sure she'd pulled the blow though. Maybe. "I'm no princess."
There she was. Phew. He was starting to worry she'd cry or something.
Zandui waved at them desperately, barely visible in the gush of light that spewed from the well. "Hurry! They're coming back."
Yeorfac paused on the lip of the well, glancing back once. Then he dove into the stream of light like a dolphin.
"My sword," Zora gasped, one hand cupped against her side. Several of the chainmail links looked crushed, and seemed to be digging into her skin.
"Anything broken?"
"Your thick skull if I don't get my sword," she growled, but her pinched lips spoiled the effect, and her eyes were still wild. Their eyes met. "Please, Elijor. My father.... My father gave me that sword."
Before he sent her away to train to be a tribute for the Ascension.
Elijah handed her over to Zandui. "I think I saw where it landed."
He sprinted across the courtyard, feeling a sudden vibration thunder through the air above him. Elijah slid like he was heading for home base, and the flap of wings missed him by inches. A screech of disappointment filled the air, but he hit the snowdrift where Zora's sword had vanished, and searched around for it, grasping for the hilt.
He found the blade and a nick of pain hinted that he'd cut himself. Grabbing it out of the snow, he eyed the distance between him and the well. Zandui had Zora standing on the edge, and shot one last look behind him.
Elijah waved at him to jump, and the pair of them disappeared, the light wavering for one hesitant second.
A buzz of discordance echoed. The well seemed to flicker for one second, like someone had tripped on the power cord.
Wyverns. Wyverns everywhere. Their heartbeats hammered at him as he hauled himself to his feet and sprinted back toward the well. Elijah ducked as claws dove for him, sensing them coming before they were there. He reached out, hands curling around another beating heart, and shattering it with his ice.
Then he was staring at the column of light, as it flickered once more.
No! Not yet. He sensed a wyvern dive-bombing for him and threw himself into the well as it gave another tremulous power surge.
The gelatinous turquoise depths of the well swallowed him whole, and Elijah felt the well give one last flinch of power as a wyvern slammed into it from above, following him through the portal.
Chapter 8
One second he was diving into the well, that burning power curling up around him, and the next it flickered again, and he found himself blinking. No well. No pool of power. No sign of any of the others.
Elijah stood in a desolate world, the ground cracked and gray. Lightning flickered in dull skies, a single solitary tree stark against its sudden light. Its branches were bare, and it looked like it had shriveled.
Sucked dry.
Elijah walked over the barren ground, his boots crunching on the dry soil. Where was he? It looked like the Ice Fangs, but there was no snow on the black rock slopes. Merely dirt that crumbled beneath his feet. Elijah climbed the narrow trail and reached a plateau overlooking the vista, and realized he was back where he'd started, earlier that day.
Agramorh.
He saw the city splayed before him, though it was a city he didn't recognize anymore in this sunbaked, barren landscape. A single sheared off tower was his only point of reference. Walls had long since crumbled to dust. The labyrinth of thorns was wild and overgrown, but even the thorns looked dead.
A woman flickered into being on the ledge, thin and formless, like a projection on a blank wall. She walked toward him, buzzing in and out, as if the reception was bad.
Elijah gave a start. "Who are you?" He looked around. "Where am I?"
"You're inside the Well of Sorrow," the woman said softly. "There is always a price to pay for entering the wells. The Well of Sorrow shows you the future, but sometimes it is not the future you wish to see."
In the world surrounding him, she alone looked alive and plump with color. Blonde hair tumbled down her back in loose curls, and thin braids framed her face. She had Zora's confident stance, a white silk tunic belted loosely around her waist, and a jeweled dagger at her hip. The tunic dipped low in front, revealing a healthy slice of breasts, but he couldn't stop looking at the perfection of her face.
Maybe it was the grim world as her backdrop, or maybe it was merely her, but she could give a model a run for their money.
"Elijah," she whispered, reaching flickering fingers toward him. "I've been waiting for you for so many years."
They brushed against his face, passing through his skin. Not real. Whoever she was, she wasn't truly here.
But then, was he?
"Who are you?" he repeated, eyes a little wild.
"My name is Asphodel." Her eyes were so dark they seemed black, and they bored into his. "Asphodel of Thanasi."
"The last tribute," he whispered. "King Dameron's final bride. You're dead."
Asphodel breathed out a sigh. "Don't mention that name." Her eyes ached with pain. "I cannot bear it."
Dameron.
"I thought you were both obliterated in the backlash of the Yarlstone."
"We were." She captured his face between her hands. Flickered again. He couldn't feel her touch, only a faint shiver of sensation. Not quite a vibration, but something. "Please listen, Elijah. We don't have much time. Dameron and I were linked to the Yarlstone when the power destroyed our bodies, but it sucked us inside it. It's not a stone, so much as a physical focus for the Current. I couldn't reach you through the real world, but the Wells are formed of pure Current, just as the Yarlstone is. They are linked. This is the only place I could reach you."
"What are you doing here? Why are we here? This is Agramorh, isn't it?"
"My father's city." Asphodel turned to stare at the ruins, her blonde hair blowing around her face. "Or what will be left of it, if the Yarlstone isn't destroyed. I wanted to see it, one last time."
Elijah's heart beat swiftly. "The Yarlstone is doing this to the territories isn't it? It's sucking the life out of the land."
"It's draining energy and magic from the world," she said sadly. "At a rate the land cannot replenish."
"But why? What are the Pasternakians planning?"
"The Pasternakians have nothing to do with this madness. They are merely tools for the true master." Asphodel tried to grab his arm, but her fingers went straight through it. "I only have a short time. I can already sense him hunting for me."
"Who? Who's hunting for you?"
"My husband," she whispered. "He knows I'm up to something. He's been striving for years, trying to draw enough Current through the Yarlstone to become whole again. He's the one sucking the magic from the world. If he succeeds in manifesting a physical body, then this time he'll be unstoppable. He'll be a being formed of pure power, pure magic. No one will have the power to face him. You have to destroy the Yarlstone before he reaches his full strength."
"But I'm not... I'm not a mage." Elijah searched her eyes. "I just want to go home, to my own world. This isn't my fight. Zora's the one who plans on entering the Ascension games. I just want to find the Keeper and learn how to return to my world."
"Zora will fall," Asphodel said coldly, "if you are not there at her side during the games. Only a mage can touch the Yarlstone and destroy it."
And the other territories had outlawed and killed their mages.
His face drained of heat.
"You're going to have to make a choice, Elijah. And I know you won't want to make it," Asphodel bit her lip. "But if you don't destroy the Yarlstone, then Dameron will ruin this world. You're the only one who can stop him, the only one with the power to w
ield the Current against him."
She was fading.
"And this," she whispered, giving a ghostly wave to the dying lands around her, "will be all that is left of Orynthica and the people here. This is your price, Elijah. This is your sorrow. If you turn your back on this world, then it will be lost forever. Because of you."
Asphodel vanished.
The world pulsed around him.
Elijah stared out over the ruined city as wind blew dried husks of what had once been living through the streets. If he looked closely, he could make out the bleached bones of something that had once had wings....
Even the monsters of this world would die.
What do I do? Elijah's hand closed around the circular amulet on the chain around his throat. It was all he had left of his world, but it lay still. Inert. He wanted so desperately to return home, to be with Zoe. His mom needed him.
This entire world needed him more.
But I'm not a mage. I only just realized I have magic.
And now they wanted to pit him against an undead mage king who was sucking power out of the very lands?
The world buzzed and flickered, the world around him fading. Elijah staggered back a step, but then the whine grew louder, and the world vanished to a thin line in a realm of sudden darkness, like the TV screen just switched off.
The very last sensation to fade was the solid rock beneath his feet.
"Shit!" Elijah wind willed in the darkness as he plunged into... nothing.
The Well spat Elijah out the other side.
Elijah swam through viscous green goo, his straining hand reaching for something, anything. His lungs heaved from lack of oxygen and finally his hand latched onto something. Hauling himself up, he broke the surface and sucked in an enormous gasp of air as he hung onto the edge of another well.
Son of a—
He could have drowned in there. Slime coated his lips and mouth and he could feel it in his throat. It dripped down his face, and he tried to blink it free of his eyelashes.
Hell of a way to go.
A dark room loomed around him, lit only by the sudden flare of a newly lit torch. Zandui lifted the torch aloft as Elijah hauled himself over the stone lip of the well and landed on the stone floors of a cavern with a wet slapping sound, straining to spit the gelatinous goo from his mouth and nose as he sucked in a lungful of air. Nobody even helped him.
"There he is," Zandui said, with a sigh of relief.
Yeorfac grunted, scraping a clenched hand down his beard. Slime dripped from the end of it as he wrung it out. "Didn't think we'd lose him yet. Who else would torment us for the rest of the journey with his never-ending questions?"
"Yeorfac, did you just make a joke?" Elijah asked, lifting his head off the cold stone. "There's hope for you yet."
A hand wiped the goo from his hair as Zandui knelt at his side. "Still with us lad?"
"Barely," Elijah said with a groan, just as the body of the wyvern exploded up through the column of light, and landed with a weak, wet flap beside him.
The excitement finally died down, leaving only the stink of dead wyvern.
"The fun never ends. Why me?" Elijah asked, trying to slide goo from his clothes. He was pretty sure he had it in places he never wanted to think about.
As the minutes ticked by, it was beginning to evaporate off his skin as if the particles simply disintegrated. Yeorfac looked almost clean and dry, though his skin was super shiny, and strands of dried crud curled in his beard. He took a pipe out of a leather bag he'd tucked on the insides of his furs, and began stuffing a pipe full of tobacco as he rested on boot upon the flank of the dead wyvern.
Yeorfac had promptly slit its throat as it flapped about weakly on the stone floor of the cellar they were in, and nodded at Elijah, "That makes us equal."
These people were mad.
"This is the Keep," Zandui said, looking up from where he was trying to peel the heavy mail shirt off Zora. She grimaced, and clapped a hand over the weeping gash on her side as Zandui dropped the chainmail in a slithering rasp.
"How bad is it?" Elijah demanded, squatting beside her.
"I'll live," the warrior girl said, grinding her teeth together.
Her tunic was stained with blood and goo. It gleamed a phosphorescent green as it soaked into her wound, and Elijah frowned. "What's it doing?"
"The Wells are filled with the matter of Creation," Zandui said, sliding her tunic up. "It's said it can heal injuries."
"Let's hope it's not going to bring that wyvern back to life," Elijah said, and Yeorfac choked on a puff of smoke as he looked down dubiously at his kill.
"Hmm," Yeorfac muttered, tucking his pipe between his teeth and drawing his knife again. "I'd prefer to take no chances. It's covered in well slime."
Elijah refocused on Zora as Yeorfac enthusiastically began sawing the wyvern's head off. He didn't even flinch through The Walking Dead, but there was something about the smell, and the sound of it, that made his throat tighten like he wanted to hurl.
"For a mage, you're rather squeamish," Yeorfac said.
"For the last time—"
"You're not a mage," Yeorfac said, and Elijah had the feeling Yeorfac was enjoying turning the tables on him. "You can just call ice into being and drop wyverns out of the sky with a thought."
"How come Yeorfac travels through the well and suddenly develops a sense of humor?" Elijah complained.
"The wells work in mysterious ways," Zandui muttered, with a perfectly straight face.
Everyone was a comedian today.
"They're relieved that we survived," Zora explained, looking awfully pale. "I thought we'd lose at least one member of the party in Agramorh."
"Let me guess which one you were hoping to lose?" Elijah said sarcastically.
She didn't bother to reply.
The goo seemed to be working its phosphorescent magic, for the edges of those ravaged wounds looked less red. Elijah thought some of the wounds even seemed to be knitting together.
Chainmail Zoe looked a lot more vulnerable without the chainmail and her sword—
Her sword. His eyes widened. Where was the sword? Crossing to the well he looked in it, and saw something long submerged just below the surface.
"You saved me," Zora said. "Why? You're my prisoner. Now I owe you a tithe."
"You sound like I should have just let you die. I'm not that type of guy. And I found a certain something." Elijah dragged the sword out of the slime and grinned at her, knowing she wouldn't thank him for adding more to the debt. "You're welcome, Princess Hard-Ass."
"My sword," she breathed, eyes wide in wonder.
Zandui slammed a hand to her shoulder as she shifted in an effort to stand. "Don't move. You're still bleeding."
Elijah wiped the sword clean on the hem of his monk's robe. The robe was dry now, as if the goo coating him had never existed. "Here," he said, crossing toward her and presenting it.
Zora's hand curled around the hilt. Dark eyes flickered up to his, as if she'd never seen him before.
"Told you," Zandui muttered.
Zora's lips pressed tightly together.
"Told you what?" Elijah asked.
Both of them studiously avoided his gaze as Zandui began dressing Zora's wound, and Elijah had the feeling he wasn't aware of half the story. There was something going on.
It felt weird to be the odd man out. He was the popular kid at school, the hockey superstar, the guy every girl made an effort to know.
And they were keeping secrets from him.
His smile slipped and faded. What did he have to do to earn his way into the clique? Sacrifice himself?
You're the only one who can stop him....
"Fine," he snapped, straightening to his full height. "Don't tell me." They weren't the only ones who had secrets. He hadn't yet had a chance to tell them about Asphodel and what she'd said about Dameron.
An echo of a distance drum caught his attention. Too late for such confidences anyway. "Someon
e's coming. Someone whose heart pounds with the Current."
"The Keeper," Zandui said. "He'll have felt us come through the Well."
"So he's going to have answers to these mysterious questions you refuse to tell me about," Elijah muttered.
Zandui looked up sharply, seemingly surprised. "We didn't come to the Keeper for us, Elijor. We came so you could see him."
My—?
The door to the cellar swung open, and a man stood there, framed by the light.
A man wearing tweed, he was certain of it. A man with his hands in his pockets, and shoes spit and polished within an inch of his life, and waves of neatly pomaded mousy brown hair, with a little mustache that curled up when the stranger gave a half-smile.
"You're the Keeper?" Elijah had been expecting black robes, and long dark hair. A glowing staff, at the very least.
"Elijah Davies," the fellow said, in a posh, upper crust British accent, snapping open his pocket watch and examining it. "I thought I felt the Well spit something into the cellar."
The fellow tucked the watch in his waistcoat and sauntered down the stairs, hands in his pockets as he surveyed the carnage with a disinterested air, as if he found dead wyverns in the cellar every day. "It's about bloody time you arrived."
Chapter 9
"You're from earth," Elijah blurted.
"Perceptive chap, isn't he?" The Keeper clasped Zandui's hand and shook it, as Elijah stared slack jawed at him. "Harry Tipton, at your service." He winked at Zandui. "Looks like you've traveled a long way, friend. Tell me, is Agramorh still standing?"
"It looks as well as it ever did," Zandui replied, with a faintly respectful tone in his voice.
"I forget you weren't alive during the Great Destruction," the Keeper replied. "She was a beauty then, all polished walls and shining domes. A rare jewel of a city. A pity." He shook his head, as if clearing it from his vision and beamed at them all. "I so very rarely receive visitors from the Ice Fang territories. News from the north is beginning to become quite thin on the ground."
