by Jada Fisher
So she pressed the staff out in front of her, pinched her eyes shut, and chanted the incantation.
“Ocalla Vas’a layco. Ocalla Vas’a layco.”
Go in peace, for we are friends.
The words were very sweet, but the magic was less so. The staff began to hum and vibrate in her grip, and she could make out a bluish glow behind her eyelids. She wasn’t sure if it would work, honestly. She’d never actually practiced this. Gayla had only told her the command words in case of emergency. Kind of hard to practice when you had no willing spirits to experiment on, nor the willingness to even do it.
So, as far as Tuni knew, she was about to get crushed, about to meet her mother and sister again in the next life.
But that didn’t happen. The spirit came to a loud halt. Everything became silent aside from some very heavy breathing—which was odd considering spirits didn’t need air to live, but they made the imitation anyway. Something they got from observing humans and other life for thousands of years.
Tuni opened her eyes and found the spirit looming over her only an arm’s length away. It stared down at her with its black-and-red eyes, though now it was much smaller than before. Still huge, but not quite as big as a building.
Her arms still shook, but she slowly lowered the staff to her thighs, never letting her gaze drop from its own.
She gulped. “We are not enemies. Please, begone and don’t come back to this place.”
The spirit gave her a long stare before finally letting out a huff and then disappearing into thin air. So that was how it got around her before. It could disappear. Maybe it could shsalite like the tree folk could. Many spirits had the ability or something similar, especially nature spirits.
With yet another threat extinguished, Tuni collapsed. That spell had drained her. It was one of only a few magical things she was capable of, given that she wasn’t a sage, and it left her more exhausted than she’d already been. Which was saying something.
She wanted so desperately to go to sleep, to just let herself rest, because everything hurt, but there was still a fight to be won. That’s when she realized that something else was seriously wrong…
It was silent.
No birds or bugs or general wilds bustle. And no sounds of magic, nothing like before. Everything had gone still. Quiet. A calm before the storm. Or the end of one.
Her mind went hazy with panic.
“Asoka,” she gasped.
Despite all the aches, pains, and exhaustion, Tuni found the strength to rush to her feet and take off at a renewed sprint. She almost fell down the hill, but she managed keep her balance as she stumbled and jogged toward where Asoka and Bishta had been fighting.
The closer she got, the more her panic intensified. She could make out words being spoken, though it was clearly Bishta. Which meant that she likely won, though it sounded like she was talking to someone, so Tuni had to hope that Asoka was still alive.
Finally, Tuni pushed through the trees and came to the scarred battlefield.
It looked like a fire had raged through the field along with a tornado. There were craters in the earth, trees and mushrooms were felled, and the grass had been blackened. The air was still thick with magic, and it made her head swoon and nausea swim in her stomach. Gayla’s spells never made her do this, and even when she’d used it in abundance like against the knights and rock spirit and against the undead, Tuni had been fine.
But this was different. The very air was burdensome. She felt itchy and sweaty and like the sky was pressing down on her. Maybe it was the type of magic that was used. Maybe combat magic was stronger. Or perhaps it was because the dark sage used dark spells. Either way, Tuni hated the feeling.
Her feelings didn’t matter, though. What mattered was Asoka, and she was in deep trouble.
The young mer was on her back, lying against a bit of rock. Her meager clothes had been torn asunder, so she was basically naked, though her body was covered in scales. Even so, she was covered in dirt and what looked like soot. Blood seeped down her face and arms and chest, and some of her scales looked like they’d been peeled away. She was alive, but she was in pain.
Bishta stood over her. The sage looked almost no worse for wear, aside from a lot of sweat and some dirt marring her pale skin. Tuni supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Asoka was still coming into her abilities. The fact that she’d managed to last this long was almost a miracle.
Neither noticed her. Tuni watched as Bishta held her staff in both hands and raised it over her head. She mumbled some words, and the black iron rod began to crackle with green magic that streaked over the rod like bits of small lightning.
“This is the end for you,” she said, her eyes on the Sage of the Seas. There was some sadness and regret in her eyes, some pity. She truly didn’t want to kill the girl, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
No.
Bishta was about to kill her. She was going to lose her friend. She’d lost enough already. Tuni had lost her mother, sister, all her friends, and her whole village—because of Bishta. She wouldn’t let her take someone else away from her.
“I’m sorry,” Bishta said.
Tuni moved without thinking, without worrying about the consequences or her own safety. Somehow, someway, she got there in time. The gods smiled on her and her legs carried her like a dragon riding the winds. The space melted in front of her. She was there.
With all her strength, she tackled the dark sage around the waist and took her to ground.
She had succeeded in one very important fact. Bishta’s staff flew out her hands and clattered loudly away from her grasp. That was good, but Tuni didn’t have time to think about that. She and this deranged girl grappled. For as frail and small as Bishta appeared, she had a feral strength that surprised Tuni. Tuni wasn’t by any means big, but a lifetime of living in the wilds had left her leanly muscled, athletic, and healthy. But this phantom fought with the ferocity of a wounded animal.
They punched, clawed, bit, spat, pulled hair, and kicked until they were both covered in scratches, bruises, and blood. She may have been a sage, but she bled, which was all Tuni needed to know.
Eventually they pulled apart, both gasping and tired, but neither letting their fight leave them. Tuni pulled a small dagger from her boot, one she never used other than to cut flowers and fruits from their respective plants. Sometimes she used it to skin a kill and butcher her meat for food. Never had she used it on a person.
She had no choice. This was life or death. Her and Asoka—still on the ground—versus the darkness. The world surviving, or everything she knew coming to an end.
She would kill if she had to.
With a roar as feral as Bishta looked, Tuni lunged for the girl. The blade cut down and sliced into her shoulder, cutting into her frail muscle as the dark sage dodged out of the way. She yelped and kicked, connecting with Tuni’s stomach, sending her sprawling.
Tuni scrambled to her feet. Her arm hung limply at her side, the blood flowing freely. Pain was everywhere. But she wasn’t done. Strength surged through her. She had to do this. She had to fight to save her friend.
By some luck, she still had her dagger on her. She was able to bring it up just as Bishta recovered and attacked again. Her blade cut into the Sage’s side, who winced and growled. They danced around each other, both pained and tired. It was in that moment that Tuni realized just how exhausted the dark sage was. She panted heavily and sweat dripped down her like she was in a monsoon.
Maybe Asoka had ultimately lost, but she’d tired the dark sage out, and that would bring Tuni to victory.
“You can’t… You can’t beat me,” Tuni said with a pained grin. “You d-don’t have your magic.”
Bishta grimaced. “Such arrogance.”
She lunged, sloppily. Tuni parried, whirling out of the way. She thought she had the upper hand, but as she turned, the sage’s hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of her beads. Bishta yanked, hard. Tuni choked and was pulled back hard. Wit
h a roar, Bishta yanked even hard and Tuni was whipped back and down. Her head smacked against the ground.
Her vision swam, darkened. Stars flitted in her gaze. Her head roared and throbbed, and she felt like she was a single second away from throwing up.
But before she could even process her situation or try to recover, Bishta let go of her beads, brought her other hand forward, and her knife came with it, plunging into Tuni’s waist, right above her hip.
Fire.
White hot, blinding, agonizing fire.
Tuni screamed. She screamed so loud and so hard that she felt like she couldn’t even hear it. Her mind blocked it out. Blocked it out with the agony, for it was all she knew. It was horrible, it was all consuming, it was fire, and it rushed through her veins, traveling through every inch of her body.
She was pain, and that was all she was.
Somehow, Tuni was able to crane her neck to see that knife buried in her hip. Buried to the hilt. Bishta still had both hands on it, her arms trembling. She gasped and gasped and looked at Tuni with wild eyes.
Without warning, the sage ripped the knife free and stood, and that sent an even worse wave of pain crashing through Tuni. She was aware that she screamed again, but just as the first, she couldn’t really hear it or feel it. She just had a vague sense that she was reacting. It was almost like she was a spectator watching all this happen, with no control whatsoever, though she still felt all the terrible pain.
Bishta stood over her, leg on each side. She pointed the knife, coated completely in Tuni’s blood, at the wildling.
“Y-You had a…a chance, girl,” she said through her haggard breathing. Blood seeped from her nose and lip where Tuni had gotten some punches in. “You had your-your chance. But n-now you die.”
Tuni didn’t have the strength to beg, to even speak. She just laid there in agony and watched the Sage of the Dark, the architect of this world’s end, raise her knife over her head. Her arms still shook, but it wouldn’t take much strength to plunge that blade into Tuni’s heart.
So this was the end.
Soon, she’d be with her mother again. Her father, long dead. Her sister Telli. They’d be a family again in death. She’d get to see Sava, Rukshin, and the rest of her friends. And then, maybe she’d also get to see Asoka too.
She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live and see the world and learn about all the amazing things nature had to offer. See all the beauty, learn about magic. Make friends, find love, have a family of her own. Tuni wanted all of that, wanted the world to love, to thrive, to change for the better.
But death was here for her. Would she become undead herself, since Bishta wasn’t doing her duties shepherding the dead? What would that be like? Would she be aware of everything? Would she feel pain, feel anything?
So many thoughts, so many worries, rushed through her head as that knife hovered over the head of Bishta the Black.
Tuni was ready, ready for the end. Ready for this pain to end. Ready as she could possibly be. She didn’t want to die, but what more could she do? She’d be with her friends and family soon. At least, she hoped and prayed that she would. No one really knew what happened. Maybe Bishta knew, but Tuni doubted she’d be willing to give an answer, and Tuni didn’t have the capability of asking anyway.
So, with blood pouring from her and her body numb with pain, she readied herself.
Good-bye, Gayla, Shandi, Dorrick, Asoka. I’m sorry I failed you.
Tuni closed her eyes and waited for the blade to come down and pierce her heart, for that one last moment of agony before she was finally released.
But it didn’t come. She heard the faint gasps of breath and the frantic footsteps and opened her eyes in time to see her salvation. Asoka rushed in and with all her strength, smashed her staff into Bishta’s face.
The dark sage yelped, dropped the blade, and flailed away. Asoka didn’t waste time. Though clearly in pain, she pointed her staff at the still-stunned Bishta and uttered a single word.
“Oblivata.”
Pure white magical energy suddenly blasted from the end of her coral staff. The air crackled and sizzled as it scorched the air and slammed into the Sage of the Dark. Bishta screamed as she absorbed the full brunt of the blow and was tossed back like being picked up by a tornado.
Tuni, despite everything, smiled.
Asoka didn’t wait to see if the sage was dead. Eyes wild and panicked, she dropped to her knees at Tuni’s side and put her arm around Tuni’s shoulders and lifted. The pain was terrible, and the wildling screamed.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Asoka cried, her voice shaky and on the verge of tears. But she kept lifting and Tuni kept screaming and the pain kept coming.
She was vaguely aware of her legs working as the two of them stumbled away from this scarred battlefield. Asoka, with her other hand that wasn’t helping Tuni stand, held her staff. With a flourish, she spoke a spell.
“Gi va ocea nelga.”
Suddenly, a torrent of water fell out of nowhere. Like a wall of water, a full tub’s worth. Heavy and cold. It slammed onto them and that hurt. They both dropped to the ground hard and somehow, the water got into Tuni’s mouth. She coughed water and blood and was wet and tired and bloodied and she felt like she was dying.
But when she opened her eyes and regained a modicum of focus and awareness, she realized that they were no longer where they’d been. They were in a flat field of wispy red grass. Tall needly trees ringed the space and in the distance, she could make out large mushroom stalks, with gray mountain peaks like a hazy mirage beyond them.
They had teleported. Asoka had teleportation magic. They had escaped Bishta—if she was even still alive. Somehow, Tuni knew their luck wasn’t that good. The Sage of the Dark would live, and she’d be back after them.
For now, though, they were alive and safe.
With a smile, Tuni rolled onto her back and looked up at the purple-and-orange sky. She no longer felt pain. She was just happy to be alive. She was very tired, though, so she went to sleep. The darkness came to her and she welcomed it. Asoka urged her to stay awake, but she needed sleep.
It was fine. They were safe. They had won.
Tuni went to that darkness willingly and hoped it wouldn’t have any monsters waiting for her.
3
Baerdon
Baerdon Lorrickson, Ivara Keet, Gayla the Green, and the faithful rhinodog Tuk scoured the Human Plains for days and nights after they first arrived with the sage. They didn’t find a single clue as to the whereabouts of his tribe and the remnants of Ivara’s people. They went south, toward the more populated coastal plains near the straits. Maybe they’d find their people, or maybe they’d find a clue.
Either way, Baerdon didn’t see too many options.
So they rode/walked in silence, taking turns riding atop Tuk. The horses were gone too, and it was foolish to have them all walk—especially with he and Ivara still recovering from old wounds. They were more or less fine, but his body hurt far too often for his liking.
The sage offered to walk full time, but Baerdon wouldn’t allow that. It wasn’t because she looked to be a young girl three or four summers his junior. Okay, maybe that was part of it, but fair was fair. She deserved some time off her feet.
As the days dragged on with fruitless efforts, the trio grew more and more tense and worried. It had been so long since Baerdon had seen his father and brother and the rest of his tribe. For weeks, he’d traveled with Ivara to find the new Sage of the Seas just as the old one had instructed them with his dying breath. He didn’t regret this quest. Baerdon was a fighter, a warrior, a chiefling. He didn’t understand magic or spirits, but still he understood how important his mission had been.
Even so, leaving his family for so long, especially with his father’s worsening illness… It had him worried out of his wits most of the time. It was a miracle he’d been able to stay focused on the quest at hand for so long without losing his grip.
So when they came back
home through the magical portal with the Sage of the Earth and found his entire tribe gone, he almost broke. Ivara hadn’t been much better, but if not for her strength, he wasn’t sure what he would have done, how he would have processed the whole thing.
He wasn’t broken, not yet, but Baerdon Lorrickson was teetering on the edge of the dark abyss. And each day that went by with nothing made that small ledge crumble little by little.
Of course, it wasn’t all fruitless, uneventful searching. No, that would have been too easy. It was much worse.
The nights were maddening. When the sun went away, the voices came out. So many voices, all calling for help or whispering pleasant words in their ears. No matter how much they searched, the voices stayed the same distance, sometimes close and sometimes far. There was no finding them. Baerdon would have thought he was losing his mind at first, but thankfully, Gayla and Ivara had both noticed the voices immediately, so he wasn’t crazy.
He didn’t recognize the voices, which was fine with him—he wouldn’t have known what to do if his father’s disembodied voice haunted him—but it was little consolation. The voices were of men and women of all ages. Some spoke his tongue, and others spoke with the strange words of the city dwellers, and some used the ancient tongue that he’d heard Gayla use to cast spells.
What the voices were or who they belonged to was a mystery to him. Even the sage was unsure what they were experiencing.
Unfortunately, the voices weren’t even the half of it. At first, it was just the voices each night, keeping them awake and haunting their dreams, robbing them of any sort of meaningful rest. That was bad enough, but then, a couple of nights ago, something else came to them.
Moving shadows.
Masses of darkness that writhed in the relentless black of the night. Always staying out of reach of his sword, always staying around the perimeter of their camp. When they showed up, after sunset, the voices would fade to faint whispers, and a thick rushing sound came with the shadows. It made Tuk whine. None of them got any sleep once the shadows showed up, and even Gayla’s magic couldn’t keep them away for long. She used some crazy light spells to make them disperse, but then they’d come rushing back after a few minutes.
