Chapter Three Prophecy Rising

Chapter Three Prophecy Rising

Elloren Guryev

Issani wasteland

Surrounded by my shield of violet Wyvernfire, I surge through the Shadow storm band, the roar of black-gray churning chaos

surrounding me and pummeling against my fire-shield, which rapidly thins as Vogel’s Shadow storm siphons off its energy.

I accelerate, racing for what feels like forever to outrun the storm band’s consumption of Yvan’s magic. Eventually, I sense

a lessoning of the maelstrom just ahead. Heart in my throat, I leap toward the storm band’s farthest edge at the same moment

the surrounding storm crashes through my fire-shield.

A lung-punching gust hits my back, its Shadow slithering straight through me and around my rootlines as I’m blown clear off

my feet and out of the storm band’s eastern-facing side.

I cry out, hurtling through the air and then colliding with the ground. My palms slam down onto charred, smoking soil, an

acid tang in the corrupted air.

Heart thundering, I force myself up, nothing but the blackened shapes of dead trees all around as I’m overtaken by the rootline-clutching

feel of the Shadow tendrils curling up from the ground parasitically linking into my power.

The shrieks of broken dragons sound over the roaring storm band’s expanse, so loud their collective rage shakes the ground.

Breath shudders through my lungs as my empathy senses Vogel’s forces gathering on the other side of the storm band. Possibly

waiting for Vogel to arrive and open a path through it, or for the bulk of my Wyvern power to be siphoned off by the leaching

Shadow tendrils before they strike.

Or both.

A chill streaks down my spine as I launch into a sprint away from the storm band, the Shadow tendrils drawing more intently on my power, the Wyvernfire Yvan is flooding into me soon struggling to even reach my lines.

I need to find living wood, or it’s all over.

I zigzag around grayed, smoking corpses of trees, frantically searching for some sliver of surviving wood until a cramp screams

in my side. My steps falter, fire power sapped from my rootlines and into the Shadow as I begin to severely weaken.

I catch sight of a sliver of pale brown bark.

My eyes widen at the slash of rich color in the center of the charred trunk just ahead.

Pulse quickening into a gallop, I lurch forward and fall to my knees before it. Lifting my hands, I frantically scratch back

the small slash of uncharred bark with my Dryad nails and uncover a surviving sliver of tawny, living wood, my breathing becoming

labored as my rootlines begin to shrivel.

I pry the sliver of wood from the charred tree just as my glimmering Dryad-green hue fades to gray, my Zhilaan Forest linkage

too distant to fight off this much Shadow. A cry escapes me, the rapidly diminishing thread of my Wyvernbond to Yvan the only

thing keeping me from collapsing into gray oblivion.

A pulse of monumental Shadowed Wyvern-Mage power hits my back, stealing my breath, silver sparks streaking across my vision.

Vogel.

His strengthening aura of corrupted fire approaching from the storm band’s western side.

Desperation ripples through me, my access to magic decimated, Yvan still leagues away, Vogel and his forces poised to advance

through their storm band and take hold of me.

Clear that my chances of survival are dwindling, I do the last thing left to me.

Pray.

“Ancient One,” I implore, clutching at the living wood as tears blur my eyes, “Blessed Vo. Mai’ya. Oo’na. Anyone who can hear me. Please, help me . I will give my life for Erthia if you do. I’m begging you. Please. Don’t let Vogel win. ”

Elloren.

I freeze, the voice seeming to come from deep inside of me as well as from the tiny piece of living wood. A familiar, masculine

voice I thought I’d never hear again.

Stunned, I glance up to find Lukas sitting on a charred branch just above me, a Watcher perched on his shoulder.

An explosive surge of emotion shears straight through my heart.

“Lukas!” I cry, choking on his name, my tears giving way.

Because he’s as transparent as the Watcher.

And utterly transfigured.

His skin is a deep, glimmering Dryad green, his ears pointed and his eyes ... they’re full of verdant fire. More Watchers shiver into view on the charred branches around him.

“Are you dead?” I rasp out. “Please, Lukas, don’t be dead.”

He smiles.

I’m transformed , he says from inside me, from inside the wood.

My gaze darts toward the distant storm band, my empathic sense of Vogel’s approach intensifying, another pulse of Vogel’s

silver-fire power coursing through me.

I look back at Lukas, the world surrounding us blurring, time seeming to pause, a tidal wave of emotion rushing in. “I miss

you,” I choke out. “I love you, Lukas. I’m sorry .”

Don’t be , he says, the words shot through with compassion. And love. Love I can feel searing straight through my heart, tears now

streaming down my face.

“I never wanted you to end up alone,” I roughly choke out.

His loving smile is undimmed. I’m not, Elloren , he says from inside my heart as he gestures toward the East. I’m part of everything now.

My anguish burgeons. “Lukas, everything is about to be destroyed .”

His expression turns blazingly serious. Then don’t let it be.

“How,” I cry, holding up my grayed hand. “Lukas, how ?”

He raises his palm, the image of III marked on it, passion in his burning gaze. Everything you ever needed, Elloren, it’s all inside you. It always has been.

And then he and the Watchers vanish.

“No!” I cry, reaching toward where he just was and finding only air. The sliver of living wood turns gray, and the nightmare rushes

back in.

“Lukas, don’t leave me !” I cry, despair crashing through me.

A slight sting on my palm has my gaze jerking downward.

Trembling, I turn my grayed palm up, and the image of III briefly seems to shimmer with Lukas’s verdant light just as the

leading edge of the Mage forces on dragonback burst through the distant storm band.

Terror threatens to overwhelm me, but I battle it back, comprehension igniting, Lukas’s words striking through me with the force of a war hammer.

It’s all inside you.

On reckless instinct, I force my nails into the charred, smoking soil and swiftly dig a small hole then thrust my branch hand

into it, burying the image of III.

A hard sting races over my palm. Rays of green light flare through the loosened soil, and the tendrils of Shadow disappear

in a sizable circle around me, as if pushed back by a superior force.

I turn my submerged palm upward, and my eyes widen as a seedling breaks through the soil, springing from III’s mark, the small

Ironwood sapling branching as it grows and sprouts vividly green leaves, its roots pushing my hand aside.

Stunned, I withdraw my hand from the soil as the small tree rises and branches, its love and support flooding through me in

a brilliant green rush as its canopy thickens just above my head.

Dryad , the sapling sends through me as it drops one of its living branches into my lap.

“Bless you,” I gasp, grabbing hold of the living branch, resolve flooding through me as my rootlines link into the branch

and the tree.

Glimmering Dryad green ripples over my skin’s grayed hue, the tree’s elemental power flooding through me as my rootlines shimmer

back to strength with Black Witch Dryad power.

“Dryad Witch!” a man’s voice bellows, his tone unnaturally deep.

I bolt to my feet, about twenty soldiers soaring toward me, their wands raised, their broken dragons shrieking.

The sapling sends a series of spells to me, and I ready my branch, the two of us our own small Dryad army.

Our own small Dryad storm .

Snarling out a battle cry, I thrust my branch forward.

A maelstrom of green magic blasts from my branch and forms a wall of pulsing green power, shot through with verdant lightning

that rapidly fans out and rises as the wall barrels forward.

My stormwall slams into the Mage forces, and dragons and Mages scream as they’re lanced through with Dryad lightning and explode into churning masses of green fire. The wall continues to push forward until it slams into Vogel’s storm band, blasting a Forest of green-lightning trees into being throughout its expanse—trees filled with enough elemental might to blow up any Mage or dragon or Shadow creature on contact, the storm band now pulsing with green light.

I start to draw up more of my sapling-ally’s power, just as I’m overtaken by a surge of incoming violet and then gold and

vermillion Wyvernfire shot through with purple sparks, both my bond with Yvan and my horde bond surging to scorching life.

I wheel around and let out a strangled gasp as the dark slash of a sky portal bursts into being in the grayed heavens. Yvan

soars through it and speeds toward me over the forest of charred trees, his gaze incandescent.

A powerful wave of aching relief and love hits me so hard that I almost lose my footing. I cry out Yvan’s name as he, and

then Ariel and Raz’zor, fly out of the portal and toward me, followed by Naga and our Wyvern horde in dragon form.

Dryad Witch! Raz’zor snarls through our bond, martial heat shuddering through his red fire.

Yvan, Naga, Raz’zor, Ariel, and the horde, save Oaklyyn, touch down in front of the storm band I’ve overtaken, the protective

runes marked on Yvan’s chest glowing bright. Yvan thrusts his palms forward and, as one, they blast out roaring streams of

fire to rapidly form their own stormwall of Wyvernflame in front of the storm band.

Naga and our horde hold the wall of fire as Yvan runs to me, Ariel at his heels. Yvan takes me in desperately, the violet

fire in his eyes turning white-hot as he notices my torn, bloodied ear. Volcanic rage on my behalf roars through our bond.

His hand slides up to cradle my ear as I grip hold of him. “Did Vogel do this to you?” he hisses.

I nod, but there’s no time to dwell on my mutilated ear. “Vogel’s an Icaral,” I rasp.

Yvan’s eyes widen, shock blasting through his fire as he blazes out a fiery image of Vogel with wings through our entire horde’s

bond.

Naga’s head whips toward us, the fire in her eyes giving a stunned flare as Ariel hisses out a string of shocked curses.

“It was never you,” I say to Yvan. “Never you all along. Vogel’s the Icaral of Prophecy. And, Yvan, I’m the Black Witch.”

“But... Fallon,” Yvan says as I watch him working to piece it all together.

“She’s dead,” I tell him, voice harsh. “I killed her. And Vogel’s coming. Along with his army. They’re massed just past their

storm band. His forces might not be able to easily get through the Shadow storm band and the lightning forest I’ve conjured,

but he can.”

“Our forces might not arrive for some time,” Yvan tells me, glancing toward the fading sky portal. “We came through once the portal held enough charge for a few, but the whole portal might take close to another hour before it can transport our entire army.”

“That’s too long ,” I counter.

Silver-hot fire knifes into me, and Vogel’s Void tree punches into my mind with staggering force. I cry out, a huge concentration

of Vogel’s magic suddenly advancing through the storm band.

“Vogel’s coming,” I warn, pulse thundering as I hold up my hand, revealing my III mark. “Throw your palms in the soil,” I

urge Yvan and Ariel. “III put seeds in our tree marks. We can manifest saplings to push back the Shadow and replenish our

elemental power—”

Multiple bolts of steely Shadow wind blast from the storm band and smash into us, the ground giving way as we’re all hurled

through the air away from each other. I grab hold of my sapling as I’m blown past it, my wind-buffeted trajectory halted as

the small tree’s pain and defiance shiver through me. Frantically searching through the maelstrom, I catch sight of Yvan’s

blurred form to my far left.

Shadowed storm spiders burst out of the earth, charred soil spraying. In a split second, their legs slam down, encasing Yvan

and my horde mates in leg-cages, gray power blasting from raised holes in their thoraxes to whip around the cages. Yvan and

my horde mates blaze a mammoth amount of Wyvern power at the spiders, only to find it being siphoned off by the largest spider

amongst them—

The gigantic queen imprisoning Yvan.

I watch with horror as Yvan and my horde mates stagger then fall to the ground, the fire in their eyes snapping out.

“Yvan!” I cry, outrage sizzling through our rapidly weakening bond.

I lurch toward him just as a bolt of silver-gray Wyvernfire streaks through my horde’s fiery stormwall and blasts into my

sapling ally.

The small tree explodes into Shadowfire.

“No!” I roar, my sapling kindred’s scream of agony tearing through me, my source of Dryad power whisked away, tendrils of Shadow

flowing in around my lines.

Vogel’s Void tree strobes painfully against my mind, as I sense the storm band I overtook graying, my lightning trees sizzling to nothing as Vogel strides through the wall of Wyvernfire. He’s bare-chested, his grayed wings fanned out. His Shadow horns are up, his slit-pupiled eyes alight with hate-bright silver flame as they meet mine.

He lifts the Shadow Wand.

I flinch as my horde’s entire Wyvernfire stormwall morphs to gray mist and falls to the ground before surging forward to snake

around my ankles.

The entirety of Vogel’s cataclysmically superior Shadow power zeroed in on me .