“Oh, Hyden,” the misty form of the goddess spoke in a voice of tinkling chimes. “Don’t you understand?”
Hyden shrugged. He was still trying to figure out why this audience with his goddess felt so different to the others.
She smiled, seeing his confusion. “You’ve died,” she said simply. “At least your mortal body has.” She put her hand on his bicep. Oddly, he noticed that her touch on his skin felt solid and cool, even though she seemed to be made out of mist. “You cannot afford to get caught up in the moment. It’s the very traits that caused the greater gods to choose you that keep drawing you from your purpose. You must weigh your loyalty to friends and family, and your sense of honor, against the balance of the whole. What are you fighting for here?”
“What does it matter, if I’ve already died?” Hyden asked.
“You’ve powerful friends, Hyden Hawk. You cannot waste your efforts battling a single demon in Afdeon when your brother is leading thousands of them toward Xwarda. What do you hope to achieve?”
Hyden dropped his gaze shamefully. “Must I kill Gerard?” he asked. “If I do, I will surely die, too.”
“The Abbadon is not Gerard,” she said a little more forcefully. “And you’ve already died, Hyden. Your brother chose his own path. He was consumed by that thing, and you should be battling it this very moment. The idea that the brother you remember is still somewhere inside the beast is foolish. Gerard is gone. If any bit of him still lingers, it is that corrupt, jealous part of him, and it must be destroyed or banished with the rest. The very people you love will fall victim if you fail.”
“But how do I get to Xwarda?” Hyden asked. “The teleportals all open into the Nethers now. I… I don’t…”
“If you had been exploring your god-given powers, instead of planning unnecessary adventures to find trinkets you could retrieve in minutes, you’d know.” her voice had a hard edge to it. She was angry. “Where did you send Talon? Your familiar’s place is with you.” Her voice softened and she touched his cheek. “Lucky for us all that you have made some mighty friends along the way. Without one of them, we’d all be doomed.” She smiled and touched his nose lovingly with a fingertip. She drew her face very near his and it seemed as if she might kiss him, but she stopped and whispered, “Always remember who your true friends are, Hyden. Never forget them.” Then her lips moved to his cheek and he was drifting.
“Is he dead?” Durge asked.
“I think he is,” Jicks replied with a sniffle.
A trio of roars erupted like thunder outside the walls of Afdeon, one after the other. They were angry sounds, low and guttural, and from something absolutely massive. Suddenly, Durge’s eyes glazed over and his movements became mechanical. He bent down to pick up Hyden’s limp body and carried it back to the lift. Jicks wiped away his tears and followed dutifully. A moment later they were rising up onto the cold floor where Hyden accidentally blasted away the outer wall.
“By the gods, what are you doing?” Jicks asked as the giant stalked over to the open hole.
The young swordsman suddenly froze.
“Durge!” Jicks yelled out in a loud whisper as a huge, split yellow eye the size of a wagon wheel pressed against the hole from the outside. The eye was hooded by a dark green-scaled brow. The whole orb gently rose up and down with the huge wyrm’s wing beats. A lower lid blinked up once and then the dragon’s head pulled away from the opening. Jicks’s heart was thundering. The green dragon was so big and terrible-looking that he couldn’t move his legs for fear of it. He began to tremble as his mind registered what he was seeing. Another roar sounded, this one far louder and more menacing than any of the others had been. This roar shook Jicks in the guts and vibrated the very walls of Afdeon.
Durge, seemingly oblivious to what was going on outside the castle, walked straight up to the opening and stood there. It took Jicks a few heartbeats to pull himself away from the spot he was standing in, but he finally did. He eased across the rubble-strewn room to the giants’ side and looked out. The voice of another giant speaking excitedly came from an open window or a balcony a few levels below them.
Jicks scanned the sky, looking for the giant green dragon, but he didn’t see it. He saw two blue dragons, slightly smaller than the green. They were circling high above in the open air. And there was a distant speck, no, two of them, winging closer from the east. They grew in size with every breath he took. Suddenly, the green dragon came shooting up before them out of the steam. It passed barely an arrow shot away. The green’s worn ivory-colored underscales followed its sleek horned head past the opening. Then came its long body and even longer tail. Its wicked-clawed hind legs were tucked tight against its body and its wings were spread wide. The sight was breathtaking, but Durge acted as if he had seen nothing.
“By the Heart of Arbor, it’s three times the size of the one we saw in the Wedjak,” Corva said as he came up behind them. “Its roar scared that devil back into the portal.”
Neither Durge nor Jicks replied, but Jicks glanced at Hyden still lying limp in the giant’s arms. Corva saw the tears flowing down the young swordsman’s cheeks and sucked in a breath. He started to say something, but a roar louder than all the others combined, that lasted nearly a full minute, ripped through the world around them. Afdeon shook again and pieces of stone and mortar vibrated loose.
“By the gods,” Jicks mumbled softly as the roar ended.
Corva stepped up beside him and looked out. A ruby-scaled dragon, which was easily twice the size of the green wyrm, was winging its way directly toward them. It was darting its angry head to and fro as if it expected a challenge from one of the other dragons in the sky. They stayed clear, giving it a wide berth; all save for a smaller red that was barely ten feet long and flying under the other, in her shadow.
The monstrous red let out a blasting gout of flame ahead, and downward, of its path. The raw heat of its breath evaporated the steam for at least five hundred feet in all directions. Satisfied that no threat was hiding in the mist below, it closed its maw and banked around so that it was facing the hole in the castle directly. With a thump of wings that made Jicks’s knees buckle and Corva take two steps back, it threw its wings out wide and stalled itself less than a hundred feet from them. The dragon’s body lifted and lowered in time with its massive wing strokes. Its huge head eased forth with narrow brows on a long, glittering, serpentine neck.
Durge, as if presenting a small child to its parent, held Hyden’s limp body out before him. Jicks’s heart hammered through his chest in both fear and awe. He had heard tales of how Hyden and the High King had defeated the demon wizard Pael, and he was most certain that this was the dragon that had helped save the realm.
Jicks glanced at Durge. The giant still showed no expression on his face. He was entranced, Jicks decided. The medallion on Hyden’s chest was fountaining sparks as bright as diamond chips in the sun. He swallowed hard, then looked back at the dragon. Its elongated snout scrunched up as if it were sniffing the air. Beyond it, the smaller red wyrm looped and banked around, chasing the other’s tail as a kitten chases a yarn ball. Jicks saw that the little wyrm’s wing scales were long and resembled feathers, some of them had shed, revealing a thin membrane of wing skin underneath.
A loud whooshing sound filled the moment. Jicks could feel himself being sucked forward toward the dragon. It was drawing air into its cavernous lungs.
“J- J- Jicks!” Corva managed. “D- Dragon’s fire!”
The dragon’s mouth opened, revealing sharp, yellowed teeth as long as a man is tall. Its forked tongue drew back, and its throat opened up. Durge, still holding Hyden out as if in offering, took a knee and lowered his head.
Both Jicks and the elf bolted away from the hole in the wall as fast as they could.
Claret couldn’t help but chuckle at their foolishness. Then she let out a roar that was loud enough to wake the dead. And the blast was laced with more than enough dragon magic to do exactly that.
Talon found Phen, Dostin, and Queen Mother Telgra as they and the elven escort came upon the bodies of the fallen elves in the Evermore forest. The hellspawned horde had long since abandoned the carnage to answer their master’s call. Arf whined under Phen, sensing the sadness of the elves around him. Phen, too, could feel the almost palpable emotion oozing from them. Dostin cried openly as his mount, Yip, padded along closely beside the new Queen Mother. All around them, littered in the forest undergrowth, near the few hulking demon corpses, lay the decimated bodies of elven archers and swordsmen. Some women and a few children lay here and there, as well, but not nearly as many as there could have been. The lack of innocent corpses was clearly heartening to Telgra.
“They fled like cowards, south to the human city,” an older elf said as he stepped out of the woods. He had a large gore stain on his tunic and haunted amber eyes.
Telgra stopped and glared at him. Dostin’s hands clenched his staff, and the wolf beneath him growled silently.
“Better than to die like fools fighting an enemy far greater than you can defend against,” Phen replied. The ease with which he moved now was still surprising. He’d been petrified so long that his muscles weren’t used to doing anything.
“Where’s your wife, Bandear Cottonwood?” Telgra asked the elf. “Where’s your daughter?”
“Mind your manners when speaking to the Queen Mother,” one of Telgra’s escorts said when Bandear started to reply harshly. His expression shifted to a sneer and the old elf turned and ran away.
“Should I chase him?” the elven guard asked.
“No, leave him,” Telgra replied. “He’s obviously distraught. He’s seen our people killed and is probably terrified. Leave him be.” She wiped away her tears. “I must go into the Arbor Heart alone.”
“We will follow you to the Heart Tree, Queen Mother,” the guards insisted. “There’s no telling what beasts or scavengers might still be lingering.”
She nodded and wiped her face again. Phen wanted nothing more than to go to her and hold her in his arms, but he knew it wasn’t proper. She was a queen. He forced the impulse away and mastered his emotion. She must have sensed his inner struggle because she caught his eyes with her own and let a faint smile of understanding curl the corner of her mouth. It disappeared quickly when she had to step over half of a young elven boy. He was clutching a bow in his left hand and his face was a grimace of pain. It looked like his legs had been bitten off. The appendages were nowhere to be seen.
Talon observed them from the trees without letting his presence be known. The familiar link between him and his wizard had been broken. The hawkling understood that Hyden had passed from the world of life, but he wasn’t sure yet what to do. Since his hatching, Hyden had been there for him. Hyden was Talon’s mother, father, and sibling, all in one. The hawkling was too confused to go to Phen yet, and Spike was in Phen’s coat pocket sleeping. Talon thought to communicate with the lyna first, but he couldn’t until it awoke. He flew from limb to limb and watched Hyden’s friends from a distance while trying to sort through his avian instincts and familial emotion.
Luckily, the goddess called upon him. Talon was pleased to be needed by such an esteemed being. He didn’t hesitate to do as she asked.
The escort came to a stop in a long, oval-shaped clearing. At one end of it there was a towering tree. Its trunk was as big around as some of the smaller castle towers Phen had seen. It stood majestically among the other trees like a king among peasants. At its base, a tangle of roots twisted their way into the ground. Phen slid off of Arf and made Dostin give Yip’s back a rest, as well. The two great wolves immediately bounded into the forest to snatch a meal.
Queen Mother Telgra disappeared through an archway formed by the roots of the Heart Tree. Phen saw her hair reflect off a shaft of golden sunlight as she continued past the Heart Tree trunk to disappear into the forest beyond. Phen took a breath and was about to ask one of the guards if there was any food about when half of the elven escort gasped in unison.
Phen turned to see Dostin sitting in the throne-like seat formed by the tree’s roots. The elves seemed shocked, or afraid to say anything, and a few of them exchanged disturbed looks. Phen understood that the simple-minded monk was sitting in Telgra’s throne.
“By the Heart of Arbor,” one of the elves said. “I never thought I’d see such a thing.”
“It’s the prophecy, I'm sure of it,” said another.
“What prophecy?” Phen asked. Before the elves could answer he spoke kindly to Dostin. “Get out of the Queen Mother’s throne. By the gods, do you have no manners?” Dostin jumped up quickly. His face reddened and he looked around sheepishly.
“I didn’t know,” he said. Then to Phen, “I’m hungry.”
“I’m hungry, too, Dostin.” Phen forced a smile. “After they tell me about their prophecy, maybe they can find us something to eat.”
One of the elves barked an order in the old language and two of their number moved off into the forest. The elf who issued the command looked at Phen sadly. Phen thought his name was Gaveon, but he wasn’t sure.
“The prophecy says that when a human sits upon the throne of Arbor the time of elves in this land has begun its end. Those who survive this darkness might return here only to find that the Heart of Arbor has moved on without them.”
“But isn’t the Arbor Heart somewhere else already?” Phen asked. “I read that the heart of the forest is not truly where it is, that it can sort of be moved to another forest if a need arises.”
“It is so,” the elf answered. “But if it were to move without us, then we would be left behind. It could take us a thousand years of searching forest after forest until we found it again.”
“The Arbor Heart could appear in a forest we’ve already searched after we have moved on,” another elf added.
“Then so be it,” Queen Mother Telgra said as she stepped back through the root-formed arch.
Two elves stepped out of the forest looking bloody and tired, then another, and another. From behind them, a small group of seven or eight became visible as they moved through the trees.
“We will go to the human city and fight beside them, if not for any other reason than to restore our honor.” Telgra’s voice rose as she spoke. She leapt gracefully up onto a root, and climbed even higher on the tangle of roots as she continued. “We have let ourselves down. We have let the Heart of Arbor down. Already our demonic foe has tainted the soil here. The fiery trees of Salaya were all but ruined, and the Heart of Arbor struggles to beat while the blood of demons chokes up in its roots.”
More elves came out of the forest as she spoke, not many, not nearly enough, but the ones who came were soldiers, freshly proven on the black blood of hellspawn. Swordsmen, hunters, archers, and a few of the older magi came out of the woods, too. By the time the Queen Mother was ending her speech there were two hundred battle-ready elves gathered around her. At some point, while she spoke, the great wolves returned.
“…if the Arbor Heart has moved on by the time we return, then that is the price we pay for our arrogance and betrayal of those who sought our aid before.” She hardened her look. “I am not ordering any of you, but those who do not march with me to defend the Wardstone from our enemies are nothing to me.”
Phen was swollen with the pride her words inspired, and the determined look on her face was unyielding.
“I’m the Queen Mother, and as long as the Arbor Heart pulses through my veins I will remain such. Those who wish to rise above our past should gather the rations and weapons you’ll need. It is a long run to Xwarda. I can only hope we get there in time.”