The Druid's Guise: The Complete Trilogy (The Druid's Guise Trilogy)

by Michael J Sanford

  “I am Wyatt the Mighty,” he hissed slowly, wanting her to feel the venom in his voice. “And I have the power to destroy any and all that oppose me. I need nothing and no one. I will not fail again. Not ever. And that starts with you.”

  He arched his back, looked to a sky he couldn’t see, and let out a primal yell that swallowed all other sound in the area. And, in a single breath, he tore the life from Fae’Herot, consuming it in one swallow. It electrified him, and the entire world collapsed upon him.

  * * *

  Wyatt gasped and fell forward, landing on his hands and knees. He gasped again, finding it difficult to take a full breath.

  “Athena?” he called.

  Wyatt collapsed onto his shoulder and rolled onto his back. Above, a night sky hung dark and clear, littered with stars. Wyatt breathed in the cool air, trying to remember what and where he’d been an instant before. His eyes lazily drifted among the stars until they rested on the sliver of a solitary moon.

  He bolted upright.

  “How?” he exclaimed, grabbing at his chest and finding his amulet, not embedded in his chest but hanging from its hempen string. Once again, the magic had sent him back to Earth without warning.

  Wyatt groaned and climbed to his feet, still feeling far groggier than he usually did after transitioning. He was standing in the middle of an asphalt street, both feet atop a double yellow line. He spun slowly in place. Trees blanketed one side of the road. An empty shopping plaza occupied the other.

  “Where am I?” he wondered aloud, once again feeling the haunting presence of the silent darkness. It had strengthened him during the battle, but now, alone, it sent shivers up his spine.

  He couldn’t see anyone or anything that he knew. But, oddly, it felt familiar, though he couldn’t understand why.

  The parking lot of the shopping center was barren, the shop windows dark. The only light was a solitary light post at the edge of the road nearest Wyatt. Wyatt wandered to it, but just as he entered its light, it went out. He froze, now truly in the darkness.

  “This isn’t right,” he whispered, the sound of his voice comforting him less and less. “This has to be Earth, but how did I get so far off course?”

  The last thing he remembered was siphoning off Fae’Herot’s life. He smiled at the thought. The action was sure to have sealed victory for the Coven. But why would his magic send him back just as he—

  Bright lights appeared along the road, accompanied by the sound of a car engine. Wyatt jumped and fell against the concrete pillar at the base of the now defunct light post. Headlights burned away the night as they quickly approached Wyatt’s position. He pushed off the concrete and ran out into the street, frantically waving his arms.

  He couldn’t see the occupants or even the make of the vehicle, but surely, they had to see him. He began jumping and shouting as well, urging them to take notice of him.

  The headlights were drawing nearer with no sign of slowing down. Wyatt stopped jumping. He abandoned waving his arms and thrust both hands out in front of him. He couldn’t get feet to move from the asphalt.

  “Stop!” he shouted, realizing that the driver was not going to slow in time.

  In a final act of desperation, Wyatt fell into crouch and covered his head. He heard the sound of screeching tires as the light engulfed him. The air filled with the smell of burning rubber, and then the lights from the vehicle vanished. Wyatt didn’t have time to move before the sound of crunching metal and snapping timber exploded from nearby. He fell away from the sound, still in the middle of the road. The vehicle was gone and he was left staring at the wooded area at the edge of the street.

  It was burning.

  Wyatt climbed to his feet and stumbled toward the blaze. “Hello?” he called out. He couldn’t see any sign of the vehicle that had nearly struck him. All he could see were flames. His nostrils flared. It smelled of burning pitch. He could hear the crackling of boiling sap.

  A horrid familiarity seized him and he began backtracking, knowing he had to get as far away from the blaze as he could, but finding himself unable to move any faster.

  He was back near the center of the street when an explosion ripped the small forest apart and sent Wyatt hurtling backwards, taken clear off his feet. His struck the light post and felt something plunge deep into his chest, stealing his breath, stilling his heart, and destroying his senses.

  * * *

  A stinging along Wyatt’s cheek brought him back. A second slap focused his vision. A third restored command over his thoughts.

  “What the fuck?” Athena shouted.

  Wyatt stared at her a moment and then took stock of his surroundings. The asphalt street was gone, replaced by one of wood, crowded with corpses and as silent as a grave. Smoke drifted lazily from recently extinguished fires along most of the buildings in the vicinity and a handful of elves milled about the fallen, heads hung low.

  “Wy’,” Athena said, shoving him in the chest. “What was that?”

  He turned back to her and saw her face twisted into a mask of anger tinged with something else… fear? “What was what?” he said. Something scratched at the back of mind, but he couldn’t reach it. For a moment, he thought he smelled gasoline, but then he identified it as the smell of pine pitch. How could he think it was gasoline?

  “That,” she said, pointing at the pile of ash and bone in front of him.

  Wyatt smiled, the memories returning in a flood, banishing the eerie presence that confounded him a moment prior. “That was the fierce Fae’Herot. And you’re welcome.”

  Athena tried to slap him, but he deflected the blow and stepped back. She mirrored the move, moving further away from him, and extended her arms at her sides. “Shit, Wy’, you just…you just…destroyed her. And then you stood there yelling for like…ever. And that thing in your chest was spitting all kinds of scary shit. Black vines…shit, Wy’. What did you do?”

  Wyatt looked down at the gem. It had calmed, no longer pulsing with power. No longer driving him to…he shook his head and examined his hands. A thick scar divided his right palm. It was puckered and…black. He shuddered involuntarily, but quickly masked it, and stood tall, smearing a scowl across his face.

  “I saved you. I saved your precious Maia. I saved all of us.”

  Athena dropped her arms and her scowl melted away. She looked defeated. “I don’t know shit about Druids or what you truly are, but…don’t you remember what Oman said? About growth and—”

  “I remember,” he shouted, snapping off her words. Athena took another step away from him and dropped her gaze. “I am a Druid. I know what I am doing. I’m doing what I couldn’t do before. I wasn’t strong enough before…but now I am. I don’t care what a silly shrew said. And I don’t care what you think.”

  “Wy’…” She looked up and he saw tears lining her eyes.

  He took a step toward her and she backed up. “No, Athena,” he said. “I’m the Druid. Not you. And I brought you here. If not for me, you’d still be stuck at the Crook. Maybe I should send you back!”

  Athena took another step away and shook her head. She started to say something, but stopped. She turned and began walking away. “I’m going to go check on Maia,” she said over her shoulder. “She’s hurt pretty bad. Not that you care.”

  He watched her walk down the street and step into a building. He spun in a slow circle, looking for something he couldn’t identify. The third level of the strange elven city was in shambles. Every moment brought more cloaked elves, abandoning their hiding places to help recover all they had lost. They swirled around him as he stared on, dazed. None looked his way or even walked nearby.

  In a city of hundreds, moments after a war, Wyatt was alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  WYATT WANDERED FOR what felt like hours, weaving in odd directions, with no destination in mind. At some point, he found himself back on the third level, stumbling among the casualties, and in another moment, he was on some other level—he couldn’t remember w
hich—truly by himself.

  He must have traveled far from the battlefield, for the air was fresh and the street abandoned. It was quiet as well, the air so still that he could hear the soft padding of his own bare feet on the smooth wooden avenue.

  In an oddly askew alley, tucked between two crooked buildings, Wyatt happened upon a break in the city wall. There was just enough room for Wyatt to sit, and that’s what he did. Pinned between adjoining buildings, with his feet hanging into the air, Wyatt sat and stared at the world of green and brown. The scent of pine rushed along a breeze, funneled into the city along the gap in which he sat. He took several deep breaths and released the tension in his body, though not his mind.

  “I saved them,” he muttered to himself. “I wasn’t strong enough to save Gareck or Mareck or Grenleck or Rozen…” He fought back fiery tears with a grimace. “But I saved Athena and Maia, and all the stupid elves that couldn’t save themselves. I’m stronger now. I’m stronger…”

  He held his hands in his lap, palms up. The wound he had suffered from Fae’Herot’s sword should have cut his hand in two or at the least left it mangled and useless. But as he had ripped the life from her, Wyatt had felt it knit back together in an instant. He didn’t need to mend it with the aid of wood and moss, as he did when Rozen had fallen to the Regents in the Shadow Forest. He had used what he had stolen from Fae’Herot. It was her life that had healed him. The black scar was ugly, and stood out against his pale skin, but it was a reminder of what he could do.

  He laughed to himself. “A big, bad faerie, with all her teeth and claws, beaten in a moment by a fifteen-year-old boy.” He looked up to the forest, taking another deep breath, and this time feeling fully at ease. Or at least mostly.

  “Aye, ye are certainly more than just a boy,” said a voice from the trees.

  Wyatt started and nearly slid off into the unknown. “Who’s there?” he called.

  The trunk of the nearest tree shifted and shape crept out onto a branch not a few feet from where Wyatt sat. The shape settled down and drew back its hood, revealing a mass of gnarled hair and feathers.

  “D’orca?” Wyatt exclaimed, though there was no doubt that it was the elven leader sitting across from him. “Where did you come from?”

  D’orca smiled, and Wyatt could see deep bruises along one of his eyes, and his beard was matted with blood and grime. “That’s a mighty deep question, now isn’t it?”

  “I mean; how long have you been sitting there?” Wyatt clarified.

  “For long before you came and ruined my solitude. I was having a nice bit of meditation. Does the body good after such a battle.”

  Wyatt blushed. “So, you heard…”

  D’orca nodded. “Ye have my thanks, for what it’s worth. We lost many good elves tonight, but it could have been far worse. We have a chance to live on. And that’s something I can’t ever repay ye.”

  “At least you appreciate what I did.” Wyatt scowled, his mood souring as he thought of Athena.

  “Ah,” D’orca said with a knowing nod. “The girl.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? She just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t care that I saved her and Maia—who she seems to care about more than me. And I was the one who brought her here. I’ve saved her more than once. And she can’t even say thank you.”

  “And what would you have the warrior girl understand, Master?”

  Wyatt wasn’t prepared to speak of it more, but hearing the elven leader call him Master, bolstered his confidence and loosened his tongue. He deflated once more and dropped his head, tucking his chin against his chest, eyes locked to the gem fused with his flesh, more black than green now.

  “I thought I could save them. Not just Rozen, but all of them. All of the Realms. They said I was a Druid, and that’s what Druid’s do—fight the Regency. But they were wrong. Rozen got hurt, then captured, and the others…and Ouranos...they lied to me.” He looked at D’orca who calmly stared back. Wyatt fought the tears for a moment, but then abandoned his dignity and openly wept. “No. It was me. They all thought I was going to protect them. They all trusted that I was strong enough. Because I said that I was. I’m the one who called me Wyatt the Mighty. I took them to Ouranos because I thought it was my destiny or something. But it wasn’t. I destroyed a whole city, messed up the Realms, and got my friends killed. It was me. I’m the one who lied. I lied to them all, and they trusted me.”

  “Lying is a tricky business,” D’orca said after Wyatt’s sobbing had settled. “And I should know, I do it with gusto every day.”

  “But you lie to protect your people. You make up stories to keep danger away.”

  D’orca shrugged. “Nothing is that simple. And it did little to dissuade an attack from the Fae. Had I told the truth myself, perhaps my son would still be beside me and the corpses littered above us would not be as such.”

  “And I couldn’t save your son either.”

  “No, ye couldn’t. But neither could I, and trust me, I deserve more fault for the matter. Truth or lies, good or bad, right or wrong. None of these things truly exist. Not really. Life hangs only in the spaces between those things. In the murky shadows of uncertainty.”

  Wyatt almost smiled at the absurdity of his situation and the ramblings of the elven leader, but the sting from Athena’s slaps had yet to fade, and he’d find no joy until he set things right. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  D’orca shrugged and stretched out on the branched, looking oddly comfortable considering all they had done earlier in the evening. “I wasn’t trying to make ye feel better. And I won’t.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  D’orca laughed and twirled his beard around a finger, ignoring the sticky blood that ran through it. “Tell me, Wyatt the Mighty, why is it that ye happened upon my forest? Story is, ye were last seen in Ouranos, tearing the place down. And that was quite some time ago.”

  “I… I don’t really know.”

  “Oh, come now. Where were ye headed before my boys snatched ye up?”

  “Gazaria.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” Wyatt said, losing his patience. “We thought maybe we could talk with the tribes and get them to join in against the Regency. I couldn’t beat them before, but maybe now…” Wyatt pressed a hand to his chest, hoping for some sign from the gem of the power he now wielded, something that would indicate that he wouldn’t fail again.

  “And the Lady Rozen?”

  Wyatt raised an eyebrow and D’orca grinned. “Ye were gone quite some time in your journey to find my son. And ye left behind a bard.”

  “Well, I want to find her, though I don’t think she needs me anymore. Not if she has a whole army with her. She’s better off without me, anyway.”

  D’orca sat up and leaned across the expanse, tilting his head to the side in a dramatic way. “It’s like ye’ve got the souls of two in ye. One moment weeping over past failures, the next raging on about defeating all of the Regency.”

  Wyatt didn’t respond, not that he could have if he wanted to. It was more confusing for him. He felt strong. And when he had taken from Fae’Herot, he had felt like a god. But even that seemed a failure to Athena, and he had done nothing but misstep while in Hagion. It all made him dizzy.

  “Well I think ye’ll find her,” D’orca said as he leaned back. “The Lady Rozen, that is.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Wyatt, my dear troubled Druid, nothing goes through this forest without me knowing of it, not creatures, not information, not the wind. And of the many things I know, I know that the Lady Rozen is said to be in Gazaria, with the very tribe that captured ye in the first place.” D’orca arched his back and guffawed so loudly that pine needles rained down around them both.

  Wyatt stared at him, dumbfounded. Rozen was with the Gazarians? He’d have been taken straight to her, had the Regency not foiled his captors, and now free, he was still headed right for her.

  Eventually, D’orca ca
lmed and looked back at Wyatt, wiping mirthful tears from his grimy face. “Well, Druid, how’s that for destiny?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  THOUGH HIS BODY was weary, Wyatt’s mind was racing. D’orca had said some strange things, but what he had said about Rozen thrilled him. Maybe I’m not a failure after all, he thought, nearly skipping as he did. Somehow, without meaning to, he was headed right for his dark angel. The old elf was right—it was destiny. His destiny. Perhaps the fiasco at Ouranos was not as it seemed. Surely, it was part of something larger. Something Wyatt the Mighty was right in the middle of.

  And now that I’m stronger…he flexed his fingers at the thought of unleashing sweet pain upon whatever Regent crossed his path, and for a moment felt a tingle of magical energy trace his limbs. He glanced down at the source of his power, now a swirl of green and black. Growth and Decay. I have both sides now.

  It took a fair bit of wandering, but eventually Wyatt found himself back on the third level, and took to looking for the building that housed Athena. Four knocks later, a door opened to reveal a familiar pair of elven women.

  “Hey,” he said, attempting to flash a winning smile, and then thinking better of it, considering the activity that was still being conducted just down the street. “You sent that fast one to alert the other Deceivers.”

  They nodded in unison and waved him into the dimly lit building. “Athena is in the back room,” one said quietly—he couldn’t remember her name.

  Taking a cue from their shared reverence, Wyatt nodded silently and traced his way to the back room they had indicated.

  Athena sat beside a low bed, alone in the darkness with Maia, barely discernible beneath a blanket. A single candle did little but highlight the edges of things with false embers. Athena sat on a stool, angled toward the bed, her head in her hands, just as still as the spriteling.