first words were, "You can do this." Despite bearing half his weight, she was having even less trouble breathing than Rel. It wasn't fair, how good the northern Gifted expected him to be. How could he compete with that?"
"I... can't!" He gasped. "I'm sorry... I... just useless."
"No you aren't." She made it an order, an instruction to the whole universe. Her words speared out into the air in front of her in a dead straight line, off into a distance Atla's vision was too clouded to make out.
"At... the Court..."
"They were so scared of you... they... didn't dare let you... near anything important." It was a relief to hear that even Pevan was running out of breath. There was still no hint of weakness in her. She grinned again. "It might be their... Realm... but it's your kingdom. Own it."
The Route chose that moment to shake, a ripple racing past them across the field of honey. Delaventrin chasing yet harder, the Wilder's mind straining the Route's capacity. Atla felt his Gift's pain, the fight to stem the inevitable overload. Somewhere at the bottom of his brain, the water was past boiling and beginning to burn.
Had the Gift-Givers really prevented him helping Pevan and Rel at the Court out of fear? How could they fear him? This Route had shattered the Wilder it struck, but that had been a complete accident. Pevan shouted something else, but it was lost under the buzzing. His Gift howled, rage and pain and anger blanketing all other sensation.
What did he have to lose for one last attempt?
He lashed out, letting go of gravity, of direction, of reason. The howl in his mind became a roar, triumphant. In his Gift, the waters parted. The Gifted flew for a moment through absolute nothingness.
Just as the yawning void - was this what Clearseers meant by the Realmlessness? - threatened to suck the halves of his mind apart, it crashed back together behind them. Delaventrin was caught in the crush, trapped, battered off-course. The Wilder vanished from Atla's awareness, not dead, but certainly reeling.
Head-on, open space slammed into Atla. It brought with it the fluff-brained numbness of deep fatigue, a rush of dizziness as the world realigned again, and then an actual impact that slammed the wind from him and filled his mouth with plant matter. There was something fresh about the quality of the light, something unmistakably real about the bitter, bland taste of the ground.
He groaned and rolled onto his back, then regretted it as sunlight poured in, cold and merciless. His head pounded, and beneath it his Gift cringed. It was all he could manage to lift his arm and lay it across his eyes. Wind - real wind, not the by-product of half-imagined physics - plucked at his shirt and slithered up his sleeves.
The First Realm. No telling if he'd found the right Sherim, but he'd got them safely away from the Separatists. Atla's Gift coiled itself around him as he let himself slip down towards unconsciousness.
***
About the author
R. J. Davnall has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn’t be trusted to write his own bio. He holds a PhD in philosophy and teaches at Liverpool University, while living what his mother insists on calling a 'Bohemian lifestyle'. When not writing, he can usually be found playing piano, guitar or World of Warcraft.
R. J. Davnall on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/eatthepen
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RJDavnall
Blog: https://itsthefuture.blogspot.com/
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