For a moment, the world swirled in a blend of colors from green and brown to a dusty, dry sand that filled my vision until I could see nothing but the dull brown tones I knew all too well.
We stood on the outskirts of a desert with tumbleweeds and cactus the only things breaking up the horizon. I shivered, unable to catch the movement and stop it. “This is Death Valley.”
Raven looked around. “You sure?”
I twisted to glare at him. “Seriously?”
I’d lived in Death Valley for over twenty years, alone, cut off from my family and Peta. All for a perceived indiscretion. One that had ultimately helped to save the world, but I’d not known that until I’d served almost my entire sentence there.
Images in the distance shimmered and danced in the heat waves that rolled up from the valley floor. A group of people from what I could see. Were they humans or elementals? My bet was on elementals.
I took a step and then another. As the landscape stayed the same, I hurried, breaking into a run. Whatever was going to happen next was not going to be good. I could feel it in my bones like the ache before a storm broke overhead—
An explosion of hardened dirt and rock erupted right in front of me, spraying my body with shards of stone, slicing through my skin in places, drawing blood on my face. I dove to the side and I think perhaps Raven was shouting for me but I couldn’t be sure. My ears were ringing too hard to know if what I was hearing was truly happening or just inside my head. A part of me wondered just how I could be injured if I was only here in Spirit. Then again, Talan had said he and the one he’d taken with him who’d tried to change things had been hurt too.
Lying on the hard-packed hot ground of the desert, I stared at the battle that raged in front of us, the figures coming into clear view as the dust settled.
Viv stood in the center of two dozen other Terralings. Her body was clothed in armor reminiscent of the Pit—black and solid except for a golden cloak that swirled around her all the way to the ground.
“Yield.” Her voice carried across the barren landscape easily. The lines of power on her arm were only just fading, and the chunks of rock in front of me were a testament to her intent. The explosions had been about driving someone, not hurting them.
I’d just gotten in the way.
The one they faced shook his head. “Child, what are you doing?”
Child? Was this her father? Confusion racked me and I lay on the ground, staring.
A single elemental who seemed unafraid of all those she faced. Even I would have been afraid if I’d had to face that many.
Slowly, I pushed to my feet and reached for Raven, finally finding his shoulder. I clamped down hard as the only possible solution hit the front of my brain like a tree slamming into the ground. “Is she going to fight… the Original Terralings?” We didn’t have names for them; they were never spoken in our legends. They just existed, they just were. They were our forebears, legends and myths even to us who were legends and myths.
The Original Terraling held his hand out. “You cannot beat me, Vivica. This is madness.”
“I beg to differ.” She lifted her hand and the ground bucked so violently, we were flung twenty feet before we hit the ground, flat on our bellies.
The Original Terraling didn’t move, wasn’t even pulsed by her show of power. He was steady on his legs as if she’d done nothing. He countered her by holding out his own hand. From where I was, I could see the brilliant green lines of power not only over his arms, but his entire body. He lit up like one of the human Christmas trees. I caught my breath at the beauty of the multi-hued iridescent colors that coursed over his skin and I saw his intention clearly written within them.
He was going to destroy her as if she were nothing.
His hand trembled. “I am sorry, child.” He flicked his fingers at her, the color intensified, and then it died, smothered under a pale glow of pink connected directly to Viv.
I bit my lower lip, held my breath, prayed that what I was seeing was wrong.
Nothing happened. There was no answering of the ground doing as the Original Terraling commanded. Vivica had blocked him.
Raven touched my hand. “What happened? I know you can see the lines of the elements around them.”
“She doused his power with Spirit.”
“Shit.”
I agreed with him but said nothing. The Terralings that ranged around Vivica began to move in a circle around the Original Terraling. Apparently they were working on her orders.
From where I lay, I could see the blood drain from his face, his lips parted as he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Impossible.”
She grinned. “Hardly impossible when you are as strong as I. I was born to rule, born to be the creator of a new age.”
Viv’s men—the other Terralings with her—swept around him with a net that glittered and shined. Dragon scales, from what I could see.
The Original Terraling fought hand and foot. He was good, but he was no match for that many warriors. Once he was caught and bound, Vivica cooed over him and made him go to his knees with a single word.
“Kneel, Frost.”
Frost, that was the Original Terraling’s name? His eyes rolled upward and he stared into her face.
I scooted forward on my belly as fast as I could with Raven following at my side. We stopped only a few feet from where Frost knelt. This close, I could see the tattoos on his body that mimicked the plants and foliage of the world, animals of every sort blending into the different greens and browns of the forest. I squinted. No, they were not tattoos. The marks were not that different from the marks I had on my own body—they were more like a brand, a piece of his skin—a mark given at birth.
“Vivica.” Frost said her name with such sadness that tears pricked at my eyes. “What do you think to accomplish by imprisoning me?”
“Not just you, Frost. All your siblings. The mother goddess has been silent too long and our people need a goddess who cares for them. I will give them that.” She smiled down at him, reached out and caressed his cheek with one hand. His face paled further, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible.
She reached to a bag at her side and pulled out a fat emerald I knew one day would be put into a ring setting. An emerald that now lay in a leather pouch on my body back in the cave.
Frost stared up at her and a soft fog seemed to float over his eyes. “There will be a breaking of the world and one will stand at the center, and you will face that one. One to save, one to destroy.”
Viv’s eyebrows shot up. “A prophecy?”
The fog slipped from Frost’s eyes and he shook his head. “That can’t be right. You are not a savior.”
She laughed softly. “Perhaps I am, Frost. Perhaps I am the savior of our world as well as its queen, even if you don’t like it.”
Raven and I lay there, staring, but all I could think about was the wording. One to destroy.
I was the Destroyer.
Before I could get wrapped up in it, Viv pressed the emerald to Frost’s lips. “Breathe.”
He didn’t have a choice, by the shades of pink that covered his body, and she forced him to do as she had bidden. His breath slipped out of him and the emerald shone from within.
Frost slipped forward. His eyes, that had been as green as the stone put to his lips, were dull gray as they shut.
Vivica stepped back and Frost slammed into the ground with a thud.
I was shaking, and couldn’t stop.
“Is he dead?” Raven’s question was asked in a tone that was as full of disbelief as I was feeling.
I watched Frost’s back. It rose and fell slowly. “No, he’s breathing still. This is the start of it, Raven. She’s going to trap him.”
As if to confirm what I said, Vivica spoke.
“One down,” she said softly as she held the emerald stone up to the sky, the light cutting through it, “four more to go.”
CHAPTER 9
Neither Raven nor I
moved from where we lay on our bellies in Death Valley, our eyes trained on the figure of Vivica—the false mother goddess. She’d just taken the power of the first Terraling—Frost—and embedded it in an emerald.
I could not believe what I was seeing. I wanted to imagine that the whole scene was a creation of Talan’s and not the true past. I wanted to believe he’d somehow put this together to force us to help him. But I knew in my heart and soul what I was seeing was real, that somehow Vivica had learned a way to harness the power of the original five elementals into the stones.
Stones that all but for one lay in my leather pouch.
I blinked and I was no longer in the desert, no longer in the past but back in the present, standing once more in the cavern where we’d started the journey. My hand was numb from the icy cold water and I jerked it out as if I’d been burned.
Stumbling, I made my way across the room and finally went to my knees, breathing hard as though I’d been running. Peta was there in a flash, her face tucked in tightly to mine. “What did you see? You were only gone seconds.”
I wrapped an arm around her and held her to me. “The false mother goddess, she confined the original elementals, she stole their power and infused it somehow into the stones.” I put a hand to my hip to reassure myself they were still there.
No, that wasn’t quite right. I turned to look at where Talan stood. “What happened to you? Why are you not confined? Why has your power not been sucked away?”
On his knees across the room from me, Raven nodded. “That is my question as well.”
Talan sighed. “Vivica came to me last, after she’d imprisoned my four siblings. As you know, Spirit elementals had been slaughtered almost into extinction. I… made a deal with her. She would have some access to my power without a fight, and she would allow the last few lines of my family to continue. I knew that it was within one of those lines that the one who would stop her would be born.” His eyes swept over to me. “You are our only hope, Lark. You are the one we have been waiting for.”
“What about Raven?” Peta asked. “He has the same powers, more actually than us.”
Talan shook his head. “No, his strength is broken between five elements. It is Spirit that trumps all, and Lark is stronger in Spirit than anyone, even Vivica. Once you are trained.”
“But not you,” I said.
“Not me.” He agreed with a quick smile that hid a truth. He thought I would be stronger than him at some point.
The whole thing felt like a setup and I didn’t like it.
I closed my eyes, and thought about all the possibilities. Why was I stronger? Was it just because of my connection to Earth and Spirit? Or was there something else? My instinct was there was something deeper Talan was not telling me.
“I can see the wheels working that mind of yours,” he said. “So like your mother.”
My eyes snapped open and I stared at him. Really looked at him, as I tried to see something that maybe wasn’t there. But the more I stared, the more I saw what my mind had been trying to tell me.
His eyes were exactly like my mother’s.
His height and build similar enough.
The line of his mouth and nose…
Air suddenly became a struggle to hold inside my chest and it whooshed out of me with my words. “Are you my… grandfather?”
His eyes bugged open and he sputtered before he answered. “Shit, no.”
But his reaction told me I was on the right track, even though he’d answered truthfully. “We’re related through my mother, aren’t we?”
He shrugged and turned away. “All elementals are related. You know that, especially within the family lines.”
The air was charged between us and I wanted to push him to get the real answer. So I went a different direction.
“You are lying about why you did what Viv wanted.” I narrowed my eyes. “It was not just to keep your family lines safe. If you could have stopped her, you would have.”
Talan tensed and slowly closed his eyes. “Damn your perception.”
“Spill it,” I said. “You do me no favors at this point by keeping the truth back.”
He stood there and finally after a good minute of silence spoke. “She had my last surviving son. I did it to save him, though in the end it didn’t matter. He was killed by a rogue elemental.”
His words were lanced with pain and truth.
I still didn’t understand how she could have backed him into a corner and I almost asked. Peta pushed a paw against my leg. “Another time. It is enough that he speaks truly now.”
She was right.
That didn’t mean I was done, though. “You allowed Viv to do all those awful things, then? You allowed your power to be harnessed to the ring, knowing she would use it to hurt others?”
“Well, not before I cursed her.” Talan grinned suddenly as if that made all the difference in the world. “I had a witch help me twist a powerful curse that we laid on Vivica while she slept. My plan was that she wouldn’t know the curse, so would unknowingly end up getting herself killed and our problem would be solved.”
“Didn’t work, obviously.” I pushed to my feet, Peta still in the crook of my arm.
Talan shrugged. “She woke up in the middle of it, took the witch and forced the terms of the curse from her.”
“Of course she did,” Raven grumbled. “Shit, why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”
“None of you were ready. And I thought it best you and Lark see it together.”
My mind reeled with everything I’d learned. I held up one finger. “So to recap. Vivica bound half of the power of the five original elementals in the rings.”
Talan nodded.
I held up a second finger. “And then she stuffed your siblings away somewhere?”
“In oubliettes around the world,” Talan said. “I’ve been searching for them with no luck, hunting for them for years. If I could free them, the five of us could stop Viv.”
“And the prophecy?” Raven strode around to us. “That had to do with Lark, didn’t it?”
Talan nodded and then shrugged. “Probably, but it could just be a coincidence of words.”
Peta snorted. “Please, you aren’t that stupid, are you?”
Another time I would have smiled at her giving him shit, but right then there was no chance of a smile on my lips.
Talan frowned at her. “Peta, what I know is that Lark is the one to help me find my siblings and stand with us against Viv. But as soon as Viv realizes that, we will be on a deadly time crunch. We find my siblings, and the six of us stop Viv. That is Lark’s calling now.”
“Why only six of us? Why not add Raven in there, too, and really knock her down?”
Talan let out an exasperated sigh. “Because it is a matter of balance, Lark. Viv imprisoned four of the six of us, one died to try and stop her, and she left me half bound to a stone. So, six must stand against her.”
Wait… “Six? There were six siblings? I thought there were only five?” Was there some unknown element? The ramification of that sent a ripple of shock through my limbs and I felt it echoed in the shock bouncing from Peta.
Talan tensed and muttered something rather uncomplimentary about himself under his breath. Peta’s ears twitched but otherwise she was still.
Talan slammed a hand against the wall. “Damn it, this is not the time.”
I waited for him to speak, feeling like for the first time that patience with him would be the key.
The minutes ticked by while he stalked around the room. “Damn it,” he repeated, “yes, there were six, though I hadn’t planned on telling you that just yet. The last born of the five original elements was myself, of course. But Mother… she had what the humans call an oops.”
I almost laughed out loud, kind of a giddy laugh because it sounded ridiculous. Almost, but managed to keep my mirth under wraps. “Okay. So why do I have to stand in the place of that sixth sibling?”
He locked eyes with me. “W
hy do you think?”
Raven groaned. “Him and his damn guessing games.”
I bit my lower lip. Dead. The sixth sibling was dead. I was taking that sibling’s place.
Talan’s facial features so like my mother’s.
My stomach rolled and I slowly went to my knees as the understanding flowed over me, a cascade of uncertainty and surety at the same time. “My mother?”
Talan nodded. “She was the baby sister we all loved, born a long, long time after the rest of us. You carry her power, Lark. As did your brother. It had to be one of you.”
He was my uncle. Talan was my uncle. Holy shit, holy shit. I didn’t know how to process what I was learning.
Peta pushed herself against me. “Breathe, Lark, or you’ll pass out.”
I took a big gulping breath, held it, and let it out slowly.
“Again,” Peta instructed, and I did as she told me until the black spots in my vision slowed.
Talan crouched in front of me. “Viv destroyed six, so it will take the six of us to put her away. She knows how to block me from using Spirit against her, as she has learned to control all the elements. We must hammer her from all sides to take her down, because she has tied herself directly to the four remaining families. She can draw on the power of many, many elementals if she chooses.”
I looked up at him. “Won’t that hurt them?”
He nodded. “It will kill them, taking the weakest first.”
Well, that was a shitstorm just waiting to happen.
“So what next, then?” Because that was where I was stuck. All these things. My parentage being laid out. The civil war happening in the Rim, the destruction of the human world, the Deep under threat, all the Sylphs missing from the Eyrie. Vivica being who she was. Having to find the missing siblings. My missing… aunts and uncles. Weirdness did not even cover that.
“We train you,” Talan said.
“That is not enough,” I fired back. “We have the stones, surely that would help us?” Or at least, we had some of them. Those connected to Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water were within my possession. I reached to the small leather bag tied to my belt, running my fingers over it. Four stones with more power than anyone should ever have.
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