by Candy Crum
As it turned out, however, she had been right. Arcadia had been in danger, and they had been right in the middle of it. Once Cathillian had returned to the Dark Forest, and she realized her bad feeling had been more than that, she had become even more determined to help.
While Arryn was gone, and they had no idea where, she had been stuck. They were all stuck—even Cathillian, who wanted to help more than anyone. It pained her to see so much hurt in his eyes, and more than once, she feared he had suffered the same fate she and his father had, only for Cat and Arryn it would have been before they had even had a chance to get started.
With not one, but two battles on the horizon, Elysia couldn’t stand the thought of sitting by any longer. She needed to do something while the Dark Forest was temporarily safe. If she moved fast, she would have what she needed and be back before anyone really missed her.
“We should approach from the west,” Rae said. “Not only is it in our direct path, but it’s the least populated area in the city, it seems.”
As they approached, Elysia focused her power as Rae had, sensing for life. She felt the presence of hundreds of small essences—those of the rodents in the tunnels below the city, as well as in the streets. She also felt the lives of those humans in the area—the shadow warrior had been right. There weren’t nearly as many on this side.
Elysia nodded to Rae and Alehah, giving them the go-ahead. She would follow, and do her best to recreate their actions. She had always wanted to learn the ways of the Schatten—the shadow warriors—but she hadn’t been patient when she was younger.
She certainly was now. It would be a good time to learn.
Rae stepped forward, her green eyes beginning to glow as the weak vines that naturally climbed the stone walls bloomed and spread out. Within moments, they had a sturdy ladder to climb to the top.
Elysia watched as the women scaled the wall at record speed, so quickly that she wasn’t quite sure if they had even touched anything. But that was part of their strength—they spent their whole lives training in climbing and becoming faster than any of the other druids. They spent most of their time in the trees, and some of them even slept in their branches.
Elysia took a deep breath and ran forward, latching onto the ladder and climbing to the top, where the women patiently waited for her. They hung from the edge, and once she met them, they slowly pulled themselves up after sensing for any presence at the top.
They swung themselves over the stone railing and ducked down as they ran across the top of the wall, making sure to stay low enough not to be seen from below.
Several bats flew overhead, and Elysia’s eyes flashed as she silently called them to her. One landed in her hand, and she held it as she spoke quietly.
“I need you and your friends to be our eyes. We are going to move through the city, and we can’t waste all our power sensing people. Will you warn us if you see anyone?”
The bat squeaked in agreement and she let him go. The warriors gave the bats several moments. Then the Schattens’ eyes flashed and thick vines sprouted and reached for them, wrapping around their waists before lowering them quietly to the ground below.
While Elysia was strong enough to do it herself, her magic wasn’t nearly as quiet as theirs. The shadow warriors failed whole training exercises if their vines or anything else they cast were heard. Elysia’s usually exploded free, causing enough noise to garner attention—especially in a hushed city.
Quietly, the three women made their way through the city, stopping and questioning rats and even snakes that came up from the tunnels upon their command. These were the creatures that could get anywhere.
“There are five of them,” Elysia whispered. “That’s not good. How the hell are Cat and Arryn supposed to take on five mystics?”
Rae sighed and shook her head. “I think they are in over their heads. Mystics don’t fight like the rest of us. Fireballs and blasts of wind can be dodged if someone knows what they’re doing. It’s impossible to dodge a direct mental attack from a mystic.”
Elysia nodded. “I’ve been lucky enough never to fight one, but my father has told me what they’re capable of. Selah could take down men by overwhelming them with pain and suffering to the point they passed out, or he could just convince them they were so tired they could no longer stay awake.”
Alehah looked around, keeping watch for a moment before joining in. “What if we take a couple out?”
Elysia’s eyes widened. “What? No, we can’t. I promised my father I wouldn’t engage. This is a fact-finding mission only, and we have our facts. There are five of them, and the dead body of the one Arryn killed is being eaten in the sewers by our little friends. I say we stick to the plan.”
Alehah knelt next to the other two. “If we do nothing, Arryn and Cathillian will advance on this place. They are seeking help right now, but if the Temple is in as much danger as the Arcadian Chancellor said, they won’t send more than one, maybe two. How is he or she going to stack up against an army controlled by pure evil?”
Elysia was quiet for several seconds as she thought over Alehah’s idea. It was terrible to even think of doing, but she couldn’t deny the woman was right. Everything she had said was accurate. There were too many for a single mystic to help with, and what if they didn’t part with any? What then?
Would Amelia be able to help?
Hell, no. She had only mediocre mystical skills at best, though Elysia applauded her will to learn the second form of magic. It had proven useful to her thus far, but it wouldn’t be enough to take back a city.
Things needed to be evened out.
“You can’t be serious,” Rae said, staring her Elder down. “Are you seriously thinking about doing this?”
Elysia opened her mouth to speak, but it closed again. “I… Ugh. Look, she’s right. If we go back, Arryn and Cathillian could decide to do the very thing we’ve done here, and get killed.”
“Exactly!” Alehah said excitedly, still making sure to keep her voice a whisper. “Rae… Who better to do this than us? This is what we do—what we train for. This isn’t battle. This will be an assassination.”
Rae stared at her partner for a moment. “If we didn’t have our Elder here with us, I wouldn’t question it, but we were brought as insurance. We are here to make sure she comes home in one piece. Will you be the one to break the news that we lost her during an assassination attempt we’d promised wouldn’t happen?”
Elysia waved a hand. “Hi, guys. Right here, ya know.”
Alehah began to speak, but went silent again, her face turning serious as her eyes began to glow.
“We have company.” Instead of speaking the words, she mouthed them.
Bats flew overhead, squeaking as they did. Elysia looked at her partners and nodded.
Rae grabbed her knife from the sheath on her thigh and leaned against the wall, somehow melding into the shadows. Alehah led Elysia behind one of the buildings they had been crouched between.
A guard walked around the corner, his magitech rifle raised as he stepped into the alley. Everything went silent, and Elysia desperately wanted to know what was happening.
Then, Alehah stepped out, nodding toward Elysia. Her brows creased with confusion as she slowly looked around the corner. The guard was gone, and there wasn’t a single trace of him anywhere.
“Uh…” Elysia said.
Rae pointed toward the roof, and Elysia looked. Somehow, Rae had taken the guard’s life and moved him to the roof without a single sound being made.
Not one sound.
She had known the Schatten were good, but Rae was certainly among the best. “Wow,” was all Elysia could manage.
Rae winked. “Thanks. Now, we have our information. We should leave.”
Alehah stood in her way. “You’re not going anywhere.” The woman’s voice was suddenly at normal volume, the pitch authoritative.
“Alehah! You must be quiet. We don’t want to catch the attention of another guard,” Elysia scolde
d.
The warrior’s eyes narrowed as she looked toward Elysia, a wicked smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Oh, sweetheart. Those guards are the last thing you have to worry about.”
Realization struck Elysia as she stared at her friend—the woman she was about to fight.
“She’s under their control,” Rae said, no longer caring about her volume either. “We’ll incapacitate her and flee. Their control can only reach so far.”
Alehah’s hand was a blur as it pulled her knife free and threw it at Rae, the blade piercing her just under the sternum. Rae groaned in pain as she fell to her knees.
“Go!” Rae shouted. “Get out of here, Elysia!”
Elysia’s eyes flashed dark green as she prepared for whatever might happen, the glow casting low light in the dark alley as power emanated from her. “I leave no one behind.”
Heavy footsteps approached down the cobblestone road ahead, and Elysia took her chance. She charged for Alehah, ducking under an inexperienced blow. It was obvious that whatever mystic was controlling her didn’t have nearly the training the warrior did. Whoever it was severely stunted the druid’s abilities.
Stupid move on their part.
Elysia recoiled from ducking away only to came back at her friend and thrust a knee into her abdomen. Alehah doubled over, coughing as she tried to catch her breath.
“You’ll forgive me later,” Elysia said before grabbing a rock and smashing it over her head, dropping her to the ground.
“Good, now use the vines and get her over the wall,” Rae said, her eyes glowing as she pulled the knife free and began to heal herself.
Just as Elysia had gotten Alehah’s unconscious form back over the wall with the aid of the vines they had climbed over with, six guards rounded the corner. She turned to see Rae unleashing hell on them, but even with all her combat training she wasn’t as fast or as good as Elysia.
Eyes still glowing, Elysia ran into the fight. Rae had already taken one down. Elysia jumped into the air and mule-kicked another in the chest, sending him flying into the road. She arched back, cushioning her landing on her hands and allowing her back to softly hit the ground before her legs swung forward, propelling her to her feet.
Crouching, Elysia struck, punching the next guard in the groin before delivering an uppercut to his chin. As he stumbled backward, she reached for her knife and slit his exposed throat open before turning and throwing it into the chest of the fourth.
Elysia watched as Rae took down the fifth with a kick to his knee before snapping his neck. She dropped to the ground, rolling out of the final guard’s reach as she retrieved the knife from the chest of Elysia’s kill before turning and throwing it, the guard falling to the ground with the blade sticking out of his throat.
Breathing hard, they retrieved their weapons before standing for a moment in the middle of the bodies.
Rae shook her head. “Something’s not right. I can feel whoever it is trying to get in my head, but they can’t.”
Elysia nodded. “You have a natural resistance to mystical magic. I can feel it, too, but that’s because my father taught me how to create a mental barrier. The Founder taught him.”
“But I thought they could break through that,” Rae said with obvious confusion, using the back of her arm to wipe blood from her face.
“No, you’re right; something’s not right. They normally can break past a block, especially novice ones like ours. This is a good sign. Whoever is doing this is fatigued. They are stretched as thin as they can go. Alehah must have been vulnerable.”
Rae smiled darkly. “And now we know they are, too. They fucked with my favorite partner. I’ve changed my mind. I think I want mystic blood.”
Elysia nodded. “We find this one, we get out. If we run into even an ounce of trouble…”
Rae nodded. “We flee.”
The women called on their magic, vines lifting them to the rooftops as they cleared one after another. They put a call out to the owls and bats alike, asking for their help to locate the mystic. They were the ones who had seen them and knew what they looked like. It would be easy to find them.
Several rats scurried across the roofs with them, following as the women did their best to remain as silent as possible. When they reached the end of the block, they saw the barracks.
“Shit,” Rae whispered. “If we get caught, we’re fucked.”
Elysia only nodded. “I guess we’d better be pretty quiet then, huh?”
Rae smiled briefly before it fell, and her eyes widened. Footsteps echoed all around them. Elysia’s eyes quickly dropped to the street ahead of them to see almost a hundred guards flooding into the wide-open intersection.
“Shit,” Elysia said, repeating Rae’s earlier sentiment.
Elysia was about to suggest fleeing, but an owl flew over, calling out to them. The mystic is in those barracks, the owl told them. He had seen him run inside.
“We can’t leave the roof,” Elysia told the owl, watching the men below carefully.
The owl circled again, coming back to call out again.
Rae looked from the owl to Elysia. “Clearly he doesn’t see what we do.” The druid shook her head as she focused again.
Realization struck the druid Elder then. “That’s because mystics can’t affect the mind of animals. He doesn’t see what we do because it doesn’t exist.”
Rae’s eyes widened. “But I thought… Barriers…” She was obviously confused.
Elysia smiled. “There are two of them in there, and they’re working together to overpower us. I’m willing to bet the first one was in there and called for backup. The owl saw a man go in. They’re both in the barracks.”
The men ahead of them began to fade in and out as they saw the truth. No one was there.
Rae looked to the left and pointed. “There’s a huge tree over there.”
Elysia nodded, her eyes never leaving the barracks. “Let’s rip them apart.”
Running like hell across the roofs, Elysia and Rae made their way to the tree. As they climbed down, they felt through the ground and found its root system.
Barefoot, as they usually were in battle, they walked along the road, connecting with the earth below as their power traveled through their feet and into the roots.
The ground shook as the tree grew exponentially. They approached the barracks, and Elysia stepped forward, her eyes almost lighting the way. She saw white eyes staring back at her through the glass, and she could feel them struggling to gain control of her, but it was impossible.
Elysia could sense Rae’s life essence behind her, shifting rapidly as she approached. The mystics couldn’t assault the Elder, so they settled for the shadow warrior with the weaker barrier instead.
With a flick of her wrist, Elysia sent the wind after her. It hit the Schatten hard and began to spin in a small but powerful cyclone, just big enough to lift her from the ground and hold her there.
The mystics inside began to sweat as they lost their leverage.
Elysia smiled as she slowly lifted her hand out to the side. Then she swung it forward, the thick roots bursting from the ground and smashing into the side of the building.
The wall crumbled and trapped the mystics, who had been unable to run. Elysia sensed a large number of rats suddenly approaching—they had caught up to her.
The mystics struggled to move, but their legs were pinned. Elysia knew she couldn’t waste any more power than she already had. She would need the rest to retreat from the city, and that would need to happen soon because the Guard would surely be on their way.
The barracks was empty, which meant the occupants of this particular building were out on patrol.
Elysia raised a finger and pointed to the terrified mystics in the building. “Dinner, boys and girls.”
The mystics eyes faded to normal as they screamed and did all they could to pull the rubble from their legs, but it was too late. Rats descended upon them and other animals like bats and owls followed suit, qu
ickly coming to understand what was being asked of them.
Elysia turned to her friend, quickly dropping the cyclone and running to her side. “Are you okay?”
Rae nodded. “I lost my damn breath in that thing!” she said, struggling to catch it now. “Any longer and I’d have choked to death!”
Elysia grimaced. “Sorry about that. We’ll talk about it later. We need to go. Now.”
The women ran as fast as they could toward the wall, taking solace in knowing they had ended two of the mystics as their screams were abruptly cut off.
“Nice going with the rats,” Rae said between breaths.
Elysia smiled. “Yeah, well, they were weakening anyway, but I didn’t want to take any more chances. They can’t control the animals, but I can.”
They quickly climbed the wall and went over the other side. It didn’t take long for them to find Alehah and heal her. Each of them was exhausted, but they managed one last run back to where they had left the horses, almost a mile away.
As Elysia climbed on Chaos’ back, she realized just how big a mistake the trip had been. The trip itself had been a wonderful idea, and she had stood by her word. That being said, it was the argument over making an assassination attempt that had gotten them caught.
She had been so sure she was making the right decisions in there, and she had—until Alehah played on her emotions. The girl was young and had wanted to really test her abilities, she imagined.
That would be dealt with once they reached the safety of the Dark Forest’s barrier.
Now, there were far larger problems. Elysia had just accidentally declared war on Arcadia.
15
Scarlett stood in her office, her expression unreadable as she stared at Nikolai and Barbara. The two mystics looked nervously at one another as they awaited their leader’s next words.
“So, let me get this straight,” Scarlett said, leaning back on her desk, crossing her arms over her chest and her legs at the ankles, and sighing as she looked at the ceiling. “Not only did that bitch make it into the city, but she managed to take out two of us?”
