by Jada Fisher
The Girl O’ Green had arrived.
16
Grear
Once Grear the Gold returned to Ita-Ku from the great library with his haul of copied, forbidden dark texts that Bishta had read, he spent more than a week poring through them. He never left Simon Lee’s side. His companion didn’t stir, didn’t get better. He just laid there motionless, his skin getting paler by the day.
The soul leech that Bishta had cast onto him was working, sucking his soul slowly every day, inching his friend closer and closer to death. Meanwhile, Simon’s consciousness was trapped in a never-ending nightmare, a cage within his psyche that he couldn’t escape. It was an added feature of the spell Bishta had intended for him. Altogether, it was complete hell, something he’d never dream of casting on another being.
The texts he had didn’t help him on that front. There was no way to reverse the soul leech, at least none that the book mentioned. The only solution was for Bishta to do it herself, so he had to make her do it.
If she died…then the spell would break.
Grear didn’t want to think of that option just yet. There had to be a chance to save the Sage of the Dark, the girl who he was so painfully linked with. Both their incantations had always been linked in some ways, dating back to the dawn of the sages. If there was anyone who could stop her and see reason, it had to be him, right?
It took a few days for Grear to read through all the texts, and that was with the strange magical highlights that Aga-Kalar’s sprites made for him to know what Bishta read. Whenever he found a passage that she spent time reading, the words on the pages glowed a brilliant blue, and what the sage found was beyond disturbing. If she could use her dark sage magic to cast these spells, the world was in even greater danger than they all realized.
It was time for him to go. He had to confront Bishta.
He closed his eyes and focused on her. The sages could always more or less sense where their contemporaries were located, though the preciseness was often spotty. But with Bishta… They were so linked by their past lives that he could almost figure out where she was.
All it took was a little meditation and clearing his mind.
Ha, found you!
He could sense her, her dark magic, stronger than ever, pulsing so far away. She was in the wilds for some reason, and she…
No, it wasn’t just her. He could sense them all. Bishta, Gayla, and the new Sage of the Seas Asoka. They were all in the same spot, and that wasn’t good. Bishta must have gone to kill them, and with the knowledge that she had, she could succeed. Even against Gayla, whose magical energy felt faint in comparison. She must have been using a lot of magic lately.
Grear cursed. I have to stop her, he thought, shooting to his feet.
He had to get to them fast. Every second was a race against death itself. He didn’t have time to use the portals. No, he’d have to use some magic, which could hurt him in the fight against Bishta, but he didn’t have any choice.
Sitting cross-legged beside the unconscious Simon Lee, Grear laid his golden staff across his lap and folded his hands over it. Eyes closed again, he took a deep breath and cast the spell.
“Apelios hade, vo’aga burn sum esh fuu’ne.”
May the tethers that bind the light and dark lead one to the other.
It was a spell, an ancient one, that allowed the Sages of the Light and Dark to instantly teleport to one another. It was draining to use, so he’d be at a disadvantage, but Grear didn’t have any other choice. There was no time left.
As soon as the words left his lips, he felt a tug in the pit of his stomach, as if his intestines were a rope that someone was tugging. Before he could blink, he was pulled through space.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in the wilds.
It was quite the scene to take in. He was in the remains of what was once a village of some sort, but the wooden homes were broken, charred, and strewn about. There were large chunks of ice as tall as he was all about, as if a wall had been built and then broken. Craters littered the area, and smoke rose from smoldering fires. Huge mushrooms dominated the periphery, and trees were felled left and right.
That was just the scenery he could take in at a glance. The real focus was the battle itself.
There she was, Bishta the Black, his dark counterpart. Black magic rolled off her skeletal limbs, surrounding her like terrible, misty tendrils of smoke. There were horrifying ghouls with different-skulled heads and eyes devoid of life. There were also shadow-shifters, menacing beings of pure darkness that could take different shapes. They weren’t all that strong individually, but they made up for it in their numbers.
Bishta had not come unprepared. The only thing worse would have been if she’d summoned more demons, but that wasn’t something she could do so easily. That could only be done at certain locations, and he doubted she’d wanted to go to the Forgotten Continent again.
Bishta was dueling with Gayla upon his arrival. Gayla had tentacle-like vines surging around her for protection, swatting at any shadow or ghoul that got too close. Meanwhile, she threw volley after volley of sparking white magic at Bishta, who absorbed them onto her skin like they were nothing. It was the black magic. It worked like a syphon. He’d read about it, and Gayla would definitely need his help.
As soon as he was noticed, which took longer than he would have expected, Bishta’s eyes went wild with hatred and she immediately pointed her staff at him.
“You!”
Grear managed a smirk. “Yeah, me.”
Gayla stopped her attack and took a moment to take a breath. “Glad to see you coming to my rescue, Grear.”
He nodded to the elder sage before his eyes snagged on a glimmer of light behind her, a shimmer of rainbow light, a shock of golden skin and blond hair. With a start, he realized what—who—it was. Asoka, the Sage of the Seas. Scales ran down her legs and arms, and it was in that moment that he realized she was mer. That shouldn’t have surprised him, given old memories of past sea sages being mer.
She wasn’t in good shape. She drooped over, eyes glazed in pain, and he saw why. Her left arm was gone below the elbow. A wildling girl with startling teal-colored eyes and a chest covered in beads and trinkets crouched by her and tried to help, but in the midst of a magical showdown, she didn’t seem to be making any headway. A tree folk girl was also with them and was coming with some large leaves that Grear presumed had some curative properties.
“You can’t stop this, Goldy,” Bishta said. Strangely, her face lit up with a sympathetic smile, as if she felt sorry that Grear and Gayla were even fighting back against her. “Stop getting in my way!”
He pointed his staff at her. “I’ll never stop getting in your way, Bishta. Not now, not ever. We’re linked and you know it.”
That got the response he hoped for. Unfortunately, that response was violent rage. Bishta slammed her staff against the ground with a roar, and a torrent of dark magic shot out in all directions, followed by more shifters and ghouls clawing their way out of the black mist.
How is she doing this without completely destroying her body?
If she kept this up, her entire being would tear itself apart in no time. Grear supposed that would be a win for them, but he didn’t want things to end like that.
The magic came at him, and he threw up a shield of light as he always did against her. The magic slammed against it, knocking him back from the sheer force of it. His shield held, but the strength of her magic was so powerful that he was unsure of how many more blows like that he’d be able to withstand.
Bishta urged her monsters after him and then redoubled her attack against Gayla. He knew that in peak condition, Gayla would have been the superior sage in ability and knowledge, but it was clear the old sage was spent. He didn’t know what she’d been up to, but she was already exhausted.
It was all Grear could do to just ward off the ghouls and shifters. The shadows were easy, but the ghouls were strong, and he had to focus on them lest their dark c
laws cut him to ribbons.
Bishta and Gayla, meanwhile, were locked in a magical grapple, their two spells joining midair in a stream of roiling, crackling energy that seemed to charge the air and made all his little hairs stand on edge. They both grimaced, and it was unclear who would have the upper hand. It would have been the perfect moment for Grear to intervene, but he was too busy diving out of the way of a bull-skulled ghoul and flurry of shifters. He dispelled them easily and came up out of a roll, staff at the ready.
That’s when it happened.
“Asoka!” the wildling girl cried. It was enough to make Grear turn away. Asoka had collapsed, no doubt succumbing to her horrible wounds. The wildling tried to shake her awake, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her large assortment of beads and trinkets jingled furiously. The tree folk girl with her tried to help, but they were both at a loss. They were not sages. They had no magic to help.
This was the moment that Bishta needed. They both saw it.
His dark counterpart broke off her attack with Gayla. The release of the spell toppled the Girl O’ Green. Bishta instead set her murderous gaze on Asoka and the two girls. She raised her iron staff and muttered a spell. He couldn’t hear her, but he saw her lips move and recognized the terrible utterance of words that he’d seen in the forbidden books that she’d read.
Mustat perash vorg col.
These were the words that would not only kill Asoka but sever her link to the sages forever. The Sage of the Seas would be done, and the seas would go with it.
In truth, if one sage was destroyed forever, the world would never be able to recover. It would essentially be a victory for Bishta, and she knew this. Strange then that she simply hadn’t done the killing spell on herself. It was obvious that she didn’t love her life, but perhaps she wanted to be alive to witness the fruits of her great labor. Maybe that was the only thing that kept her going.
So of course, she’d target another sage, and one like Asoka who was so young and inexperienced.
There was nothing he could do, though. The spell escaped her lips, and a bolt of crackling pale green magical energy erupted from Bishta’s staff.
Gayla jumped in front of the mermaid sage and the two girls. The bolt hit her in the chest.
The Sage of the Earth hit the ground hard and didn’t move.
The air was silent for a split-second before the wildling girl let out an earsplitting scream that held so much anguish, it made Grear’s heart ache. She must have been close with the Girl O’ Green, because she ran from the tree folk girl and Asoka to Gayla’s side. She held the sage’s head in her lap and wept, doing all she could to save her.
Grear looked back at the dark sage. Bishta gave the proceedings a long look, her face contorted in a dark frown. But finally, she smiled, satisfied, and left through a dark portal. The few remaining ghouls and shadow-shifters disappeared with her.
Bishta could have ended them. Gayla was dying, Asoka was knocked out and bleeding bad, and Grear was her equal, but even he seemed exhausted and on his last legs.
But when she struck down Gayla, that was it. Bishta smiled and disappeared from the battle, escaping through the inky portal. Grear knew from reading the books that all those spells were killing her, sapping her of magic faster than she could replenish. There was a reason she looked worse and worse each time he saw her.
That said, the Sage of the Dark had the deepest pool of magic of any of them.
He needed to go after her. They were both drained and exhausted, her more than him after that last spell she used, but he had a choice. His eyes lingered on the space where she’d been, then his eyes found Gayla and the crying wildling, flanked by the bloodied knight.
Grear wasn’t sure if he could defeat Bishta, and he was sure that she wouldn’t listen to reason or help Simon Lee. No, she had to be stopped, and if that meant killing her, then so be it.
As the wilding cried and begged, Grear felt powerless to end Bishta, and he wouldn’t be able to save Gayla’s life, but after reading the same book that Bishta had, he knew how to save the line. The answer was clear to him. He would stay.
With an iron grip on his staff and an iron resolve in his heart, he strode away from Bishta’s exit and made for the Girl O’ Green and her companions, with the slim hope that her death wouldn’t be for nothing.
17
Tuni
It had all happened impossibly fast, yet so slow at the same time. Gayla had appeared, which had stumped Bishta for a moment. Gayla had tried to talk her down, talk reason to the rogue sage, trying desperately to put an end to this without violence. Tuni was sure they all knew that it was a feeble hope, but Gayla had to try.
It hadn’t worked.
Bishta launched an assault on the Girl O’ Green. Tuni wanted to help, but Asoka was getting worse. She and Ash were doing all they could to save her. Dorrick meanwhile was trying his damnedest to keep the monsters at bay. He was drenched in sweat and blood and pain as he danced around them, cutting down anything that came close.
Ash ran to the trees to pick some medicinal leaves that might help stabilize Asoka. Tuni just steadied her shoulders and tried to get her to focus. The mermaid didn’t seem to even be there. Her eyes were so distant it was scary. Tuni took the sea sage’s face in her hands and whispered to her, trying to draw her back. She pressed her forehead to Asoka’s and cried, begging for her to be okay. Ash came back, eyes wide. Golden blood seeped from some cuts on her shoulder and hip where a ghoul had cut her, but she pushed through that pain.
She swiped at her sap-like tears and used them as adhesive on the circular fan leaves that she applied to Asoka’s arm. Asoka gasped, the first sign of awareness they’d had from her in minutes, and Tuni allowed herself some hope.
Then in a flash of light, a new combatant appeared, and Tuni saw the man she assumed to be Grear the Gold, the Sage of the Light, come to their rescue. She really believed that they would win this. The world would be saved on this day because the dark sage would be defeated here and now. There was no way she could win against Gayla and Grear, right?
Right?
It was in that bloom of hope that Asoka collapsed, her wounds finally becoming too much for her to bear.
Everything faded around Tuni. All the chaos of the battle, all the pain in her body and the heat of the wilds and danger of the monsters all around, all of it went away. All she cared about was her friend, who fell limply into her arms.
No, no, no, no, no!
Tears blocked her vision. Tuni shook Asoka furiously, which maybe wasn’t the smartest, but she was panicking. She grabbed the coral staff and pointed it at the wound and tried to remember some of the spells she’d seen Asoka use for healing, but nothing worked. It was all feeble, useless. Her friend was dying, and she could do nothing.
And then she felt it on the back of her neck, that terrible creeping danger that she was about to die. She turned right in time to see Bishta’s glare and the pale green spell that shot toward them as their sure end.
Only it never came. Gayla jumped in front of them at the last moment and took the blow.
The Girl O’ Green hit the ground, and she didn’t move. Bishta looked at her work and left though another portal, taking her monsters with her. It was over. The battle was lost. Tuni was alive, but she wished she wasn’t.
It all crashed on her, and she screamed so hard her throat went raw.
She ran to Gayla’s side, feeling awful for leaving Asoka. Torn between the two people she cared about most. Her friend and her mentor. Both dying. Both leaving her alone in the world.
Please don’t leave me.
Gayla wasn’t dead yet, but she was so weak, and her eyes, her beautiful green eyes, looked at Tuni. They weren’t eyes of pain or sorrow, but those of joy and love, and that hurt even more.
She raised a shaky hand and put it against Tuni’s cheek. Her thumb feebly wiped at the wildling’s tears, though they just kept coming.
“I-it’s o-o-okay.”
“No,” T
uni wailed. “No, it isn’t!”
Gayla gulped, which looked to pain her, but she smiled. Somehow, impossibly, she smiled. “You…you are the only one. It’s u-up to-to you now.”
Tuni gripped Gayla’s hand, pinning it against her cheek as more tears came and her body ached from her sobs. “Don’t go, please.”
The sage’s pained face softened, and her smile was so warm that it hurt even more in Tuni’s chest. “You have all you need now.”
Gayla’s eyes closed, her lips still curled in a peaceful smile.
She felt it the moment that Gayla slipped away. Her breath was gentle as it slowly slipped free of the sage for the last time. Her heart ceased its beating, the color seemed to fade from her skin, and then she was gone.
A thousand years of life, of faithful duty to the earth and its denizens, snuffed out like that.
Tuni wailed. A sound so sorrowful she was sure it could be heard from Al-Sevara to Masrataa. Her whole being felt like it was about to crack into a hundred pieces. It was too much. She’d lost too much, too many people. Her mother and father, her sister, her friends, her village, her home. And now Gayla and Asoka. Why? Why did it keep happening to her?
And she was sure that the spell Bishta used was the one that would end the line. She just knew it in her bones. Her gut screamed that this was it. Gayla was gone, the Sage of the Earth was gone, and the world was doomed.
Grear was suddenly by her side, sliding to his knees beside Gayla. He laid a large, pale hand on the sage’s forehead.
Tuni blinked at him through her tears and tried to find her voice. It was hard.
“Wha-what a-are you d-doing?”
“There’s still a chance,” he replied. “I can save the line.”
Tuni’s breath caught in her throat and her heart wanted to leap. “You can? How?”
He closed his eyes and took a long breath. “No time to explain.”
