by DM Fike
Magic Prophecy
Legends of Llenwald, Book #3
DM Fike
Avalon Labs LLC
Copyright © 2021 DM Fike
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ASIN: B08XB8WJD5
Cover design by: Avalon Labs LLC
For Dad, who always encouraged my big childhood dreams.
BOOKS BY DM FIKE
Magic of Nasci Nature Wizard Series
Chasing Lightning
Breathing Water
Running into Fire
Shattering Earth
Soaring in Air
Legends of Llenwald YA Portal Fantasy Series
Magic Portal
Magic Curse
Magic Prophecy
CHAPTER 1
A BITTER WIND hit Avalon Benton as she sat, dazed, on the top steps of the Hall of Mirrors. Small white flakes fell from night clouds, not large enough to stick to any of the concrete surfaces of the deserted Fantasma amusement park. Not many coherent thoughts went through her mind, only a vague numbness accentuated by the cold. She rubbed her arms in vain, wrapped in a light hoodie against an early snowfall. In an effort to warm her paralyzed brain, she scooted farther into the Hall of Mirrors. An emergency light cast her reflection upon the mirrors, her silhouette multiplied in every direction. They slithered, empty shadows of herself, retreating farther back into the darkness, splitting and reforming all around her.
Avalon caught a clear glimpse of her reflection in the emergency light. She stared back at red hair wild around her face, eyes devoid of light. She turned her head quickly away.
“Why?” she whispered.
Why had she been experimented on, injected with bits of a relic called the Jaded Sprite Statue from another world? Why had she developed magical powers from it when others died? Her mother would have told Avalon not to cry, but she didn’t have tears left. She simply felt hollow, spent. Maybe it was because Bedwyr, the last dryad, had finally ripped the Child of the Statue from her or because she had just witnessed her sometimes friend, sometimes enemy Nobody die. True, he had betrayed them, but in the end, the gremlin had also tried to save her from death. A lump formed in her throat as she thought of his demonic companion Vimp, wailing over his crumpled form.
But there was no changing the past. She had to focus on the present. Bedwyr had released the Child of the Statue, ironically not into himself as planned but into his second-in-command, Scawale, an Aossi purist who hated all humankind on Llenwald. Now Scawale had complete control over the five magical elements: earth, fire, wind, lightning, and ice. Avalon’s blood ran cold at the horrific magic Scawale could wield. At least Avalon had managed to teleport her companions out of Scawale’s monstrous path. But where had they gone? Desert Rose, the ice and fire warrior. Isolde, the earth explorer.
And Kay, the lightning and wind knight.
A soft metal clang rang out across the empty park.
Rocked out of her stupor, Avalon crouched behind the Hall of Mirrors podium. She waited several beats of silence before peering out into the husks of boarded-up booths, packed away for another year. Fantasma had closed for the season, only a few scattered backup lights creating cones of visibility among the darkened exhibits and attractions.
A second metal clang echoed from the same direction as before. Avalon knew she needed to move forward. She crept down the steps, away from the mirrors, away from the general direction of where she had heard the noise. She stuck to the darkness to give herself the best camouflage, not knowing how many cameras Fantasma had installed during her absence.
The path led Avalon toward the Serpent, Fantasma’s beloved roller coaster, its hulking metal frame twisted against the dim skyline. Avalon pressed herself against game booths as she came upon the Serpent’s opening turnstile. She was so intent on staring up at the ride that she didn’t see the overturned trash can until it was too late. She stumbled over the top of it, one sneakered sole slipping on a plastic trash liner. Metal screeched as the can’s lid spun on its edge to a stop.
Avalon held her breath. Not a sound echoed through the park, not a rustle in the shadows. Even the breeze had died down to nothing. She finally let out a sigh, thinking herself safe, when a bright pinpoint of light flashed in her face.
“Who goes there?” a stern male voice called.
Avalon held her hands out to shade her face, peeking through her fingers to examine the face behind the light source. Navy slacks came into view, followed by a fur-lined black parka with a badge on one shoulder. A security guard. That must be new, like the cameras.
The guard pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “Don’t move. I’ve already called the police.”
Avalon froze. The last time the “police” had shown up at Fantasma, it had actually been Boxer, a stooge for Bedwyr’s medical research company, Saluzyme.
The guard approached her cautiously but steadily. Avalon could stay here and be hauled away, or she could make a run for it.
She jumped to her feet and sprinted into the Serpent queue.
“Stop!” the guard shouted behind her.
Avalon zipped through the short metal gates, jumping over several to avoid zigzagging into close contact with her pursuer. The security guard, not nearly as agile, lagged lengths behind her, his breathing ragged.
Avalon bypassed the barn-like enclosure that led up to the coaster loading zone and ran toward the ride’s exit, two tall wooden doors that would lead her into the darkened park. She could escape from there.
To her horror, though, the left door suddenly swung shut. A shadowy figure skittered to the right door, ready to repeat the process.
Avalon would be trapped inside.
“Wait!” Avalon yelled, breaking out into a dead sprint. The door inched closed so slowly, she thought she might just scrape by. The door’s velocity, however, picked up speed and it slammed shut before she could get her palms on it.
A sickening click told her it had locked on the other side.
“Let me out!” Avalon yanked on the knob, trying desperately to unlock it. She slapped her palms against the wooden surface. “Open up!”
“Hands up!” a voice demanded not far behind her. “Or I’ll shoot!”
Scowling with frustration, Avalon raised her arms above her head. “I’m not the only one in this park!”
“Shut up,” the guard said, slapping the cuffs on. Avalon suffered through a few unnecessary jerks of the wrist. Her stomach dropped when the guard put in a call to the local precinct to come pick her up for trespassing.
“I’m telling you, someone else is in Fantasma,” Avalon insisted. Did she feel a strange temperature fluctuation in her gut, or was it her imagination?
“I’d worry more about yourself, if I were you,” the guard said. “You’re in a lot of trouble.”
CHAPTER 2
AVALON SLUMPED IN the corner of the holding cell, the off-white floors and walls a stark contrast to the chrome door and the room’s tiny toilet. She could have taken a seat on the sterile wooden bench. Instead, she nestled her head between her legs, hugging her calves to hide her face.
The intake process had not gone well. The officers had demanded to know her name, but she refused to speak. They obviously did n
ot find any identification on her. Complaining of the hassle, they photographed and fingerprinted her. The officers left her in the holding cell to wait for someone who would ‘take care of her.’ Despite the ominous wording, this at least felt like normal law enforcement. No Saluzyme flunkies threatened to whisk her away.
Although, now that she had time to dwell on her dire circumstances, maybe being hauled off by Boxer wouldn’t have been the worst outcome. He might have at least taken her to Llenwald. Here on Earth, she had nothing, penniless and alone. The most she could hope for was that the cops would let her go on a misdemeanor charge. If they stuck her in a Utah prison, Kay and the others would never find her.
She had to find some way out.
The metal door creaked open. A young officer towered over her with a metal bar and chains. “Detective’s here. C’mon. Stand up.”
Avalon complied, shuffling down the barren hallway behind him. The officer escorted her to a room with a table bolted to the floor with matching stark chairs. A mustached middle-aged man stood as she entered, dark eyebrows bushy above a stern face. A white and green cardboard box lay open on the table. Avalon got one look at her full name scrawled in permanent black ink on the side of the box and stifled a groan.
They knew who she was.
“Hello, Avalon,” the man confirmed her worst fear. “I’m Detective Ramirez.”
She would have folded her arms if the chains hadn’t prevented it. She settled instead on leaning back away from the detective.
Detective Ramirez removed a folder from the box and skimmed its contents. “Funny, nothing in here states that you’re mute.”
“I’ve got nothing to say.” She hated that her voice cracked from disuse.
“We’ll see about that.” Ramirez continued to flip pages. “I don’t suppose you know why I’ve got a file on you.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Are you saying we didn’t catch you trespassing on Fantasma property? Again?”
Avalon held her tongue.
“And I suppose it’s an unlucky coincidence that you always happen to be trespassing when property’s damaged or fires start.”
“I didn’t do any of those things.” Not that it mattered if she did or not. She couldn’t possibly tell the detective that those were caused by Aossi, magical humanoids from another world.
Ramirez stopped on a page toward the back of the file. “None of that bothers me nearly as much as the last incident you’re connected to.” He slid the folder over to a confused Avalon.
Avalon stared down at the case file with trepidation. Saluzyme’s name popped out at her, along with Bedwyr’s alias, Dr. James Skog. But it wasn’t until a photo fell onto the table that she stifled a shriek.
It was a picture of the collapsed floor of a Saluzyme research lab. The Entelegen, a brain scanning device that Bedwyr used to detect the Child of the Statue, lay at the bottom of the pit inside the basement, its metal frame twisted and broken making it barely recognizable. The wreckage showed char marks from a recent fire. Underneath its heavy weight, a hand poked out, pale and blood spattered.
“Do you know what this is?” Ramirez asked.
Of course, she knew. It was a picture of Dr. James Skog underneath his own terrible machine. She’s the one who’d pushed him there months ago.
Avalon pushed the folder away. “That’s awful. Get it away.”
“You’ve no recollection of this scene?”
“I’ve never seen it before,” she said.
Ramirez rustled through the papers. “That’s funny, because video surveillance at Saluzyme caught you fleeing the building not long before we took this picture.”
Sure enough, a second grainy photo showed someone who looked a lot like her—frazzled hair and all—creeping through the Saluzyme parking lot. Her face was turned back toward the camera in profile, soot and mud clinging to her clothes. Avalon vividly remembered fleeing not long before paramedics arrived at the scene.
“Are you sure you had nothing to do with Dr. Skog’s murder?”
“Murder?” Avalon repeated dumbly.
Ramirez pointed at the bloody hand in the first photo. “You don’t think a person gets crushed under that much metal and lives, do you?”
Under normal circumstances, perhaps, but Bedwyr was anything but normal. As the last of the dryads, he was a fantastic healer. He had even admitted to her that he had tried to kill himself many times but could not die.
And he’d had that conversation with Avalon after this photograph had been taken.
“So where’s the body?” Avalon demanded, hoping to prove in a roundabout way that Dr. Skog still lived.
Ramirez huffed into his moustache. “Released to his relatives for burial, of course.”
Avalon’s heart sank as she realized the cycle of events that must have taken place. Dr. Skog “died” under a ton of rubble. The police investigated, finding him obviously crushed to death by blunt force trauma. The remains would have been released back to someone Bedwyr knew, likely a bunch of Saluzyme flunkies. The police thought Dr. Skog was in a casket underground somewhere. They could not possibly know he had been flown overseas to recover from his injuries
“You and Dr. Skog had a doctor-patient relationship, right?” Ramirez probed.
Avalon’s mind raced as she tried to piece together some sort of an explanation. She couldn’t tell them that Dr. Skog was alive and well on another world, where fairies and elves lived, so she decided to be as truthful as possible. “My father worked for Dr. Skog. He treated both my mother and myself for a serious illness. He cured me. Why would I hurt him?”
Ramirez stroked his moustache. “Maybe because your mother didn’t make it, despite the doctor’s best efforts.”
Avalon bit the inside of her cheek at this. It was precisely because of Bedwyr that her mother had died, having been an unsuccessful lab rat in his scheme to control the Child of the Statue.
“Or maybe it was because your father also died in a lab fire at Saluzyme.”
Again, Avalon refused to respond. Her feelings about her father were complicated. Had he known about Bedwyr’s horrifying experiments, or had he been duped like everyone else?
“You may be alive, but Saluzyme took everything from you.”
Avalon’s face flushed. The detective didn’t realize how correct he really was. A surge of anger went through her, manifesting as a flicker of warmth.
Ramirez cocked his head at her, hands delving inside the box. “You really don’t have much to your name. We only found a handful of belongings in that gray car you stole. Mostly things you need to live: clothing, food. But also these.” He pulled out her father’s old Saluzyme files that she had been investigating during her last visit Earth-side. “Pages and pages of confidential patient information. Highly illegal. And then this.” He retrieved capped vials from within the box, each bearing the Saluzyme hexagon logo. “Company property. Probably not meant to be carried around by the daughter of an employee.”
Avalon continued to clamp her mouth shut.
Ramirez pushed all the contents aside on the table to create a clear path between him and Avalon. He placed his folded hands between them. “From here on out, we have plenty of evidence to charge you with a crime. Trespassing for sure. Theft. And it probably won’t take too much more to ratchet that up to a murder charge.”
A knock on the interrogation room door saved her from responding. Ramirez gave Avalon one last long stare. “What you say when I come back could be the difference between freedom in your golden years or living your life in a box.”
With those ominous words, he left, chatting with someone outside the room as he closed the door.
Avalon let go of a large gulp of air. As her headache intensified, she rubbed her temples. She knew she should not answer any questions and wait for a lawyer, but what good would that do? A lawyer wouldn’t believe her any more than the cops. She couldn’t explain any of the events that tied her to these criminal activitie
s.
She might very well be locked up for life.
Avalon slumped forward, arms flung on the table, accidentally brushing against one of the Saluzyme vials. Her arm immediately throbbed.
Avalon flinched and straightened. She glanced down at the familiar pain and gasped.
The Miasmis bruise, though faint, had returned, right at the spot where James had always injected her with the Jaded Sprite Statue.
Why now? Avalon’s face flushed naturally hot, sweat forming at the small of her back. As she shifted uncomfortably in the metal chair, a fresh chill washed over her, and she could feel the moisture freezing over into ice crystals, sticking to her tunic.
Heat and cold like she’d felt at Fantasma. Only one person gave her that reaction.
The interrogation room door swung back open. Ramirez re-entered, a frown plastered beneath his moustache as he sulked into the room.
“I still think this falls under local jurisdiction, Agent Brimestone,” he grumbled to someone outside. He gathered up loose papers and roughly shoved them back into the evidence box.
“Everyone does,” a forceful female voice replied.
A dark woman with long pale blond hair pulled in a bun sauntered into the room. Her practical black-framed eyeglasses peered with disdain down at the detective with her height advantage. Even in a simple black business jacket and slacks, she looked gorgeous.
Desert Rose.
Avalon and Desert Rose had a complicated history. Pretending to be a mercenary for Bedwyr, Desert Rose had once been willing to sacrifice Avalon’s life in order to protect the kingdom of Emerged Falls. If Desert Rose hadn’t formed a magical bond with Avalon, she might have killed her for convenience’s sake. Even with that, their relationship remained rocky at best.
Avalon’s jaw fell open. “Wh—”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Desert Rose told her. To Ramirez, she held out her hands as he tried to skirt around her. “I’ll be taking all associated evidence as well.”
