by Eric Vall
“Thank the gods,” she muttered.
Relief was evident in her voice, and I found myself unclenching my fists. I watched as she stepped out of her fighting stance and approached the drake’s body. She paused about five feet away, but the corpse didn’t so much as twitch, so she approached it with a little more confidence.
Which, of course, is when the drake opened its huge, orange eyes and lunged at her.
The woman shouted in alarm as she whipped the sword up between them. She was fast enough to block its snapping teeth, but then her feet seemed to catch on something on the ground and she stumbled.
I reacted without thinking.
Trusting the power inside me, I stretched my hand out toward the drake and woman. The feeling grew and grew inside of me until finally, I couldn’t contain it anymore.
I clenched my fingers, and the whole world shuddered.
More specifically, the ground beneath my feet.
As I watched, the dirt between the drake and I collapsed inward explosively. Within a moment, a sinkhole ten feet across had opened up in the ground and seemed to race toward the beast.
The ground beneath the drake’s hind legs fell out beneath it. Its back half immediately dropped into the gaping hole, and it slammed its front legs into the ground to try to gain some purchase. The dirt was already too unstable though, and it gave way like sand beneath its massive talons. The beast let out a terrified screech before it began to slide backward and then dropped out of sight.
I wanted to cheer in victory, but then I saw the woman flounder at the edge of the newly created sinkhole. She tried to scoot away from it, but the dirt kept collapsing, and the blue-haired beauty cried out as she started to fall in.
Again without thinking, I raised my arm as if to grab her, and the ground immediately stopped shaking. I looked at the back of my hand in shock and saw the weird lines I had seen before were suddenly darker, almost black, and looked raised. The symbol stood out in stark relief against my skin.
I… I really did that.
I flicked my fingers, and the dirt trembled again.
“Holy shit,” I breathed with wide eyes.
The woman was still struggling at the edge of the gaping hole, so I stowed my amazement, carefully skirted the edge of the canyon I had apparently created, and crouched next to her.
“Here,” I said as I leaned down and offered her my hand.
The woman looked up at me with her dark emerald eyes, and the breath stilled in my lungs under her arresting gaze. She hesitated a moment, but then she reached up and took my hand.
I tried not to react as electricity zapped through me the moment we touched.
“Thank you,” the woman said as I helped her to her feet. Even though her face was smudged with dirt and green blood, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Well, other than the goddess that brought me here, but that was beside the point.
“You’re welcome,” I replied as I dropped her hand. My skin tingled where I had touched her. I casually looked her over as I tried to think of something else to say, but then my eyes zeroed in on the bloody gash the drake had torn in her forearm. I hadn’t even seen when she got the injury, but she must have gotten cut by the drake sometime during the battle.
“Crap, you’re hurt,” I said as I reached out. I froze an inch away from touching her again and looked up to meet her green eyes. “We need to take care of this before you lose any more blood.”
The woman looked at me strangely. “I will be fine,” she responded at length as she tried to hide the wound behind her back. “There is something I need to make sure of first.”
Before I could ask what she meant, the woman stepped around me and inched her way to the edge of the sinkhole. I carefully followed behind her and looked down over her shoulder.
The hole was at least twenty feet deep and, in the shadows at the bottom, I saw the drake move. Rock and sand shifted, and orange eyes blinked up at us as it snarled wetly.
“It’s dying,” I remarked in awe. I was still shocked by the fact that I apparently had magic, and now I had also almost slain a giant, murderous lizard with the help of the beautiful woman beside me.
Today was definitely the most action-packed day of my entire life.
It was awesome.
I glanced at the woman beside me, and her face was made of steel and granite, every line sharp, defined, and beautiful.
“Then let us ensure its demise,” she whispered softly in response.
She raised her uninjured arm before her and, an instant later, blue flames shot out of her fingers and down into the hole. The drake shrieked in agony as it was engulfed in a raging fire. The noise was so loud and jarring, I clenched my fists out of reflex, and the ground began to shake again.
The woman and I stumbled back from the hole just in time for it to collapse in on itself, burying the drake once and for all under a ton of rock and stone.
Chapter 3
When the ground finally stopped shuddering, the blue-haired woman and I were left staring at a heaping pile of jagged rocks. A moment later, the forest descended back into silence. The wind rustled the leaves and long grasses around us, but other than that, there was only the sound of my ragged breathing and my pounding heart.
I inhaled deeply through my nose to calm myself now that the drake was well and truly dead, but when I exhaled, it was like all the adrenaline drained out of my body at once. I wavered on my feet, and my vision flickered.
“Careful,” the woman murmured beside me. She reached out and braced my shoulder with her uninjured hand. The shock from where our skin met grounded me, and I shook my head to clear it.
“Sorry,” I rasped before I cleared my throat. I flashed her a quick little smile. “I’m a little tired all of a sudden.”
The woman’s mouth twitched upward in the beginnings of a smile. Now that we weren’t fighting for our lives, a softness had entered her face. It was still strangely angular with high cheekbones, an arrow-straight nose, and a sharp chin, but the lines were attractive now, not harsh with anger. Her eyes were the most alluring part of her though. They were perfectly almond in shape and of the deepest, forest green with flecks of gold around the iris.
Before I could become completely lost in those enchanting eyes, the woman’s lilting voice pulled me back to reality.
“I would be more surprised if you were not weakened after such an impressive feat,” she said as she gestured to the cairn of rocks that sat on top of the drake’s makeshift grave.
I puffed my chest out a little at her praise, but the movement caused me to go lightheaded again. The woman tried and failed to suppress a smile.
“Here,” she told me as she reached toward her hip. I hadn’t noticed that the belt her sword’s sheath hung from also had numerous pockets sewn into the leather. The woman reached into one of these pockets and produced a pair of what looked like silver berries. She offered me one, and I took it tentatively.
There was only the briefest of sparks between our fingertips, but by the way the blue-haired woman met my eyes, I knew that she felt it, too.
The woman withdrew her hand quickly and then looked at me expectantly. When I hesitated, she rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was fighting a smile.
“It’s not poison,” she assured me. To prove her point, she popped her own berry into her mouth and bit down. Purple juice tinted her full and luscious lips, and she closed her eyes with a contented sigh.
Less wary now, I gave the silver berry between my fingers one last glance before I slipped it onto my tongue. As my teeth broke the skin, a delicate sweetness filled my mouth and instantly, my headache evaporated. I blinked, and the world looked clearer. I was suddenly surer on my feet, felt stronger, my balance more stable. I took a deep, embracing breath and felt invigorated.
I looked back to the woman with awe, and she actually chuckled at my expression. Her laughter sounded like chiming bells.
“I take it the Tiorlin berries are t
o your liking?” she asked. She had lost the battle against her smile, and now it bloomed beautifully across her face. Somehow, her teeth were perfectly white despite her lips being stained dark with berry juice.
“They’re amazing,” I breathed honestly. “I feel great. Like I could take on ten drakes now!”
The woman giggled, her green eyes bright. “Do not get ahead of yourself,” she teased. “The vigor gifted by the Tiorlin berries will not last long. We must obtain true sustenance before our fatigue returns.”
“Could we not also have more berries though?” I asked with a cajoling smile. My blood was practically singing through my veins now, and every synapse in my brain was firing at peak efficiency. I gave the clearing we were in a quick, cursory glance. “Are there not any more nearby that we could pick?”
The woman cocked her head and looked at me strangely. “No,” she said at length as her eyes continued to scrutinize me. “They are only found to the east, along the Nalnoran border. Nalnora is their native land.”
She told me all this slowly as if she were explaining something obvious. Confusion had entered her face now, but then she winced in pain.
Immediately, my newly invigorated eyes were drawn toward her left arm, which she had moved to cradle against her ribs. Bright red blood dripped off her wrist to stain the grass below.
“You’re losing a lot of blood,” I observed with concern. “Why don’t we take care of that first before we get into any more questions?”
The woman looked like she wanted to argue, but her face had gone paler than the rest of her. “Sage advice,” she murmured, and then she swayed on her feet.
“Whoa there,” I said as I stepped forward and softly caught her elbow. “You need to sit down.”
I turned my head to look around the clearing, and I spotted a fallen log about twenty feet away. “Come on,” I said to the woman.
The blue-haired maiden let me gently guide her to the log and then she collapsed down onto it with a sigh. Her eyelids fluttered closed and as beautiful as she looked with baby blue eyelashes lying against her full, rosy cheeks, I knew I couldn’t let her fall asleep.
“Hey, stay with me,” I coaxed as I knelt in the grass beside her. Her eyes squinted open.
“I’m fine,” she tried to argue, even though her voice trembled slightly. “I merely need to rest for a moment.”
“Well, you do that, and I’ll attend to this little cut, alright?” I replied with a smile.
The woman’s eyes shrewdly roved over me from head to toe. “Who are you?” she asked with a tilt of her head.
I straightened my spine a little, and emboldened by the berry juice, I gave a small bow. “Mason Flynt, at your service, my lady,” I declared grandly.
It might have been a little corny, but I had always wanted to say that to a woman. Every man wanted to be a knight in shining armor, and even if I wasn’t wearing chain mail, I had still helped to slay a giant lizard beast and rescue a damsel in distress. I felt that I was entitled to a little showmanship.
The blue-haired woman actually looked impressed with my behavior. When I met her eyes again, she inclined her head in her own bow.
“I am Aurora Solana,” she introduced herself. She lifted her green gaze to mine and added proudly, “I am a member of the Order of Elementa and an appointed Defender of Illaria.”
That all sounded rather important and prestigious, but before I could formulate a response, Aurora’s hair shifted slightly in the breeze, and she reached up to tuck the wayward strands behind her ears.
Her very prominently pointed ears.
“Y-you’re an elf,” I gasped. Excitement like I had never known flooded my system. An actual, drop-dead gorgeous elf stood right in front of me. I knew Nemris had said that there were an infinite amount of realms, species, and possibilities, but I couldn’t get over the fact that the woman I had saved was a real, live elf.
Aurora must have misread my excitement for something else because her eyes instantly went sharp as glass and her mouth thinned into a razor-honed line.
“Half-elf,” she corrected. Her voice held an edge of hostility, and her body language had become defensive.
I realized I had offended her somehow, and I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “N-no, I didn’t mean anything by that,” I rushed to explain. “It was just an observation. I’m new around here. Back on Ea—I mean where I’m from, there were only humans around. You surprised me is all. I meant no offense.”
The half-elf maiden regarded me suspiciously for a moment, but that suspicion quickly faded into curiosity.
“What kingdom do you hail from?” she asked as he tilted her head at me. “Your accent is strange.”
I smiled nervously. “You wouldn’t know of it,” I replied. “It’s… far, far away from here.”
That was the understatement of the cosmos. I thought back to my boring old office and my mundane schedule. The black and white humdrum of Earth was now replaced by the vibrant colors and fantastical details of Illaria around me.
“But that’s not important right now,” I added with a smile. “What’s important is that we stop this bleeding, alright?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Aurora finally inclined her chin in a nod, and I took that as permission to reach out gently and take her hand. As softly as I could, I rotated her wrist until the underside of her forearm was exposed. Calling it a little cut was a gross understatement. The gash was nearly six inches long, an inch wide, and maybe two inches deep. It stretched from the inside corner of her elbow down toward her wrist, and blood pulsed sluggishly from the gaping wound. Thankfully, it looked like the drake’s talons had somehow missed all major veins and arteries, but the injury was still worrisome.
It wasn’t like I had a first aid kit on me, but I needed to find a way to stop the bleeding. I looked down at my body and was surprised by the clothes I now wore. Brown leather breeches and knee-high boots covered my legs. A tight, brown leather tunic was also tied down the front of my chest, under which I wore a loose fitted, long sleeve white shirt. Since the clothes were the least weird thing I had seen today, I barely even hesitated as I reached down, pulled my tunic up, grasped the bottom hem of my white shirt, and tore a large swath of fabric off.
I then proceeded to rip the cloth into strips of various size. I took the most narrow piece and gently tied it around Aurora’s upper arm. She grunted slightly in pain as I tightened it.
“Sorry,” I apologized, but she shook her head.
“It’s alright,” she replied through clenched teeth. She took a deep breath and then looked down at her arm. I followed her gaze and saw that while the bleeding hadn’t stopped entirely, my makeshift tourniquet had slowed it substantially.
I continued to hold her elbow with one hand as I reached for the remaining strips of my shirt. “This might hurt a little,” I cautioned, “but I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
Aurora met my eyes, and for a moment, I found myself lost in the forest green depths of her gaze. I shook myself and swallowed tightly. I needed to focus. With great care, I softly began to wrap the blue-haired woman’s wound. The white cloth was immediately stained crimson, but as I put a slight pressure on it while pulling the wound closed and continued layering, that lessened the flow of blood. By the time I tied off the provisional bandage, the top strip of fabric was pristine.
“There we go,” I said as I sat back on my heels. I smiled warmly at the half-elf maiden. “How does that feel? Not too tight?”
Aurora flexed her arm slowly and then clenched and unclenched her fist. “It is perfect,” she declared. She caught my eye again, and a wane smile flickered across her lips. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied. “Although, you will definitely need stitches. Someone with more medical knowledge than myself should really take a look.”
The blue-haired woman waved her uninjured hand dismissively. “I will have it seen to when I return to Serin. Now that the wound is not bleeding freely, I am in n
o danger. I heal faster than most humans. As long as I don’t develop an infection in the next few hours, I’ll be fine.”
Accelerated healing? I definitely wanted to ask the half-elf maiden more about that, but she seemed a little sensitive about her heritage, so I decided against it. Instead, I latched on to the other piece of information she had provided me.
“Serin,” I repeated as I tested the word out on my tongue. “Is that a nearby city? Where you’re from?”
Aurora cocked her head quizzically at me. I was still crouched in front of her, barely a foot away. When she shifted, her hair fell forward to tickle my kneecap, and I was assaulted by the warm and spicy scent of smoke. If the smell of her alone wasn’t alluring enough, the skin-tight, white dress she wore certainly did the trick. In her seated position, her bountiful breasts strained at the fabric, and I swore I could see the outline of her nipples.
“You really do come from afar, don’t you?” she mused, and her voice pulled me out of my less than PG thoughts.
I smiled indulgently as I brought my eyes up and willed my blood pressure down. “You have no idea,” I chuckled.
The half-elf maiden hummed to herself and regarded me with her bottle glass green eyes.
“Serin is the capital city of Illaria,” she finally said at length, “which is the kingdom we are currently in.”
“Knew that much,” I said with a grin. I slid off my heels and settled back into the grass as I stretched my arms out behind me. When I dug my fingertips into the dirt, that strange pulse of power thrummed through me again, but instead of shaking the earth, it merely softened the ground directly under me. I shifted in my now comfortable seat, and a million questions flew through my mind. One jumped to the forefront of my thoughts and fell out of my mouth the next instant.
“So, you’re from the city Serin,” I began. “Is that where this Order of Elementa you mentioned you serve earlier is? What exactly is it?”
Aurora sat back slightly on her log and took a deep breath. It looked like she was struggling for words. “The Order is the right hand of the realm,” she finally said, as if that actually answered anything.
