Into the Light (Axe Druid Book 1)

by Christopher Johns

  She purred and butted her head up against Samir’s left leg and wandered back over to Bokaj.

  “My, my, Granny T, what big teeth you have!” The Snow Elf teased his friend. “Oh shit! They are bigger! Damn, Tmont–” She swatted at him before leaning up against his legs, “Put the roids down, bruh.”

  I put my hand on my I necklace and willed Kayda to come out. She materialized from it and looked around brightly.

  “Oh my, a Lightning Roc,” Winterheart rumbled from where he was sitting. He craned his neck so he could get a closer look, and Kayda cried a warning. “I mean you no harm, youngling. I am Winterheart. I haven’t seen one of your kind in a long time.”

  He brought his head back a bit, and she settled once more. “You didn’t… take her from the nest, did you?” the Ancient asked with a hard glare.

  “No. He and I rescued her from a Goblin raiding party that had killed her mother. She died to give her life and entrusted her safety to my brother here,” Yohsuke spoke for me.

  The Dragon nodded and looked to Samir, “If you will have it, Fae Lord, I would offer my strength for this one. The Druid has proven honorable, and my darling niece adores him. I would further show my support for this cause.”

  Samir looked to Winterheart and nodded, then back to Kayda. “Roc. You do not look the imposing figure I imagine your mother would have been.”

  The way he said it pissed me off. Kayda hadn’t asked for what happened. She hadn’t asked to be pressure cooked the way her mother and I had had to do, fighting to give her life. I was about to tell him to shove it when Maebe touched my hand. My familiar called at him, her chirps and whistles clipped and almost bitter sounding.

  “You aren’t whole, and you worry that what has made you feel broken makes you weak, that your deformity will hamper your master. Am I right?”

  Kayda shuffled forward and stopped a foot away from Samir and called, long and hard. At first, in rage and anger. Then it turned to fear—the fear that he was right. I could feel her emotions in my chest and berated myself for not knowing this before. I looked up from my frustration in time to see Kayda look back at me sadly with her lightning yellow eyes. She’d tried to hide it because she knew I’d be like this. I didn’t deserve her.

  “You deserve to spread your wings. You deserve to grow. You, who have fought to survive and thrive, deformed by your very birth, but didn’t let it stop you.” He stooped until he was eye level with her. “You, Roc, would have made a most excellent Fae creature. This realm would have been more splendid than it is with your addition. Winter Dragon, lend me your frost.”

  The embodiment of the Fae Realm stood to his full height and reached his left hand toward Winterheart. The Ancient Dragon stood as much as he could and reared his head back. The temperature dropped dangerously, and then his head shot forward with a concentrated burst of ice and freezing snow bursting from his maw. The sound of it was like the wind of a category five tornado in a tiny room—it was deafening. The energy from the breath weapon funneled into Samir through his hand and once it stopped, the Dragon collapsed and huffed. The Fae lord brought the energy from within himself and then into his bare hands. It flowed like a contained blizzard in a small ball with streaks of green and purple, like a snow globe. It was still loud as hell.

  “Do you seek power, Lightning Roc?” Samir called loudly. “Do you wish to continue to thrive?!”

  Kayda let loose a cry that sounded like thunder and spread her wings wide. She puffed her breast, and the energy shifted. She was engulfed by the light and sound.

  The light went from blinding to bearable in seconds. Then it faded completely. Kayda ruffled her feathers after and bowed slightly to Samir. She turned to look at me, and I took in the view.

  She was now two feet taller, putting her at six feet, and her body was a bit bulkier. Her azure blue feathers now had shorter, more pointed feathers of a lighter blue that resembled scales like Winterheart’s mixed in around her breast, back, and the bony ridges of her wings. She had been cute before, but she was even cuter now. I looked at her stats and saw that a small bump in her charisma had helped with that. I looked over her other stats and my jaw dropped. Her race had changed!

  Name: Kayda

  Race: Storm Roc

  Level: 12

  Strength: 16

  Dexterity: 20

  Constitution: 25

  Intelligence: 14

  Wisdom: 10

  Charisma: 10

  Unspent Attribute Points: 0

  Oh man! What would this mean for her? What would she be able to do? Would she be able to use other elements as well as lightning? We would have to see when the time came. For now, she still only had her two main spells, and her next would come in three levels. I broke from my thoughts when I felt a brush of cold but familiar thought against my mind and noticed Kayda looking at me.

  Okay? she asked me, clearly concerned.

  “Yes, love,” I assured her. “I’m okay. How are you? How do you feel?”

  Different. I could tell that the concept was new and confusing to her. She ruffled her feathers and shook herself out. Static emanated and dispersed along her feathers in small, beautiful sparks and arcs of white and blue.

  “Mesmerizing.” Samir stole the word from my mind as I was thinking it. “She is even more beautiful, and now she may not be whole, but it will not be the product of her matron’s folly.”

  “The fuck did you say?” Yohsuke asked incredulously. He looked like he was ready for war, and I couldn’t blame him because I was there with him.

  “She told me everything you know of what happened,” he nodded to Kayda where she stood, “and you corroborated it. She failed to protect her nest and must have been careless in her hunts to have been tracked that way. Even if the Goblins had stumbled upon her, she should have been more than a match. She was not. She failed. Her young died.”

  I was honestly lost for words. Few times has that ever happened to me, let me tell you. My friends would back me on that, but this asshole had just spouted all that, and I didn’t have a rebuttal. She should have known better, and maybe if she didn’t have a nest to protect, she could have fought harder. I would’ve made that argument, but he continued speaking then.

  “Regardless of her inability or whatever else may have factored into her demise, her progeny was deeply affected by it. Instead of allowing the creature and her young to perish as I would have, your realm’s deities and Nature itself saw fit to give it a chance. As have I. Take better care of her than her mother, mortal, for she is beautiful and welcomed here if she should wish to stay.”

  “Her mother sacrificed her life for her, you st–” Yohsuke began, but Kayda spread her wings in front of him and cooed at him.

  “Let it go, brother,” I translated. She was feeding me her thoughts and feelings now. “She understands what was given, and she doesn’t hold her mom responsible.”

  Yohsuke looked from me back to Kayda and nodded once before turning and walking away a few feet. Kayda followed him, and I knew it’d be okay when my friend started cursing at her softly and called her a stupid bird when she tried to peck him playfully. She must have been trying to cheer him up.

  “Thank you for your assistance and gifts, Samir. They are appreciated,” I said.

  “As I know, mortal. My request is that you keep those creatures out of my realm as best as you can. If I find another, I will destroy it and turn my sights on the Prime for retribution.”

  “This is a fight for all the realms, not just your own,” Jaken informed him. “We’re fighting to stop these guys, and yeah your help is appreciated, but we can only do so much. Help the other realms and find a way to tell us should you find another, but don’t needlessly lower the defenses of the Prime realm when it would just do more harm than good.”

  “Be that as it may, no more will come here, or the price will be steep. Now, I must really prepare if I am to get you to when you need be. Until tomorrow.”

  He was gone then, faded from
sight, taking Titania with him.

  “There are no preparations for me to make. I bid the rest of you to retire for the evening and ready yourselves for tomorrow. Good night.” Maebe hurried off out the door before any of us could speak. When the door clapped shut, we all turned toward each other.

  “That guy was a dick,” Balmur stated flatly. The rest of us laughed, and a horrified Winterheart just looked on while shaking his head.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A servant led the party to their various rooms, and I was led to a room at the end of the hallway across from Yohsuke’s room on the right. It was about the same size as my room at the inn in Sunrise. It was comfortable enough with a nice bed and little in the way of furniture other than a sturdy dark wooden chair.

  We all went about our evenings, served good, warm food, preparing for gods knew what was to come the following day in our own ways. Kayda perched over in a corner near the bed and slept with her head on her chest. Keeping her cooped up all the time wasn’t fair. I laid on the bed and tried looking at my newest spell and ability but couldn’t focus on it. It’d have to wait.

  All I could think about at first was how shaken Maebe had been. I guess being ordered about and seeing the closest thing to a Fae Queen’s peer being laid low like that would cause her reaction—but damn.

  After a while, my thoughts drifted to Rowan and what he had done. My last thought before going to sleep was the look of terror on that boy’s face before his final grizzly moment. It sent a shudder down my spine. After that, the dark of slumber claimed me, and I knew no more.

  I don’t know how much later it was, but I felt a shift on the bed and opened my eyes to see that it was Maebe.

  “Hey,” I greeted her groggily. She hushed me with a finger to my lips and slid under the blankets with me.

  “If you would pay me a boon, I would sleep here with you tonight. Our guest and his… actions have unnerved me, and for once, I do not wish to be alone.”

  I nodded and scooted over. We all had bad dreams and fears. If someone could take my power, what kept me safe and whole where power was everything, I’d have shit myself. She had put on a much braver face than I would’ve.

  Eventually, I nodded off a couple of times. The queen was quiet, but she must have been alright because she had been still with her eyes closed before sleep claimed me.

  I woke up to her staring at me on a chair once more. I jumped a little in surprise, and she smiled. Kayda cooed at me from beside Maebe where the queen was scratching her head absently.

  “G’morning,” I mumbled at them both. Maebe nodded and Kayda just turned her head to a more advantageous position. Goofball, I thought to myself with a harrumph.

  “Time?”

  “Is still relative,” Maebe answered with a small smile, “but it is mid-morning and close to time to leave. You have food that your chef has been outfitted with, and the rest of your new travel clothes are ready as well. They have been packed in a sack, but we do not have the time to appreciate them as my doting tailor wishes. Come, we must gather.”

  We left the room; Kayda would’ve been difficult to bring through the corridors so she went back into my necklace with the promise of letting her out as soon as I could.

  We entered into the throne room again and sat at a thick cut, beautiful, wooden table with food all over it.

  “‘Bout time, ya sleepy bastard,” Yohsuke shouted as we walked through the door.

  All the party was there eating. Winterheart opened a ridged eye and looked us over before Yohsuke finished his thought, “Hurry up and eat, fucker. We got shit to do.”

  I grinned and joined them at the table. I let Kayda out to fly and eat some as well. The whole table took to throwing bits of meat up to the bird as a game. She was doing so well, in fact, that even Winterheart was impressed with her accuracy.

  He began to question her and speak with her in his own way and she back. While they spoke, we tried to plan for what may be to come.

  “Do we have a window of time on when we could be sent back?” Balmur asked. Maebe shook her head. “Okay, so our plan is going to be worthless.”

  “Not necessarily,” Bokaj objected. “We know where he is and where he’s likely to be. I’d say if he was going to hole up somewhere, it’s going to be where he can get anywhere in the city as quickly as possible. That leaves the rock—it’s centralized and easy to see as a base.”

  That’s fair, I thought to myself and nodded. It was a very fair assessment that I hadn’t been concerned enough about. Shows where my head was at.

  Right up my ass.

  “Okay, so dislodging my head from my rear here,” I grunted. “He thinks we’re gone, so we may have the element of surprise. He won’t be able to exile us from the plane again, so that option is gone. If we get the drop on this guy, we have to go all in. Hard as fuck.”

  “Anyone get anything good on that last level?” Jaken asked. “I got a couple of good abilities that I can try out and one I wanna keep in reserve if shit really hits the fan.”

  The others nodded and began to explain some of their more recent spell acquisitions. Yohsuke had gotten a strengthened version of his Infernal Body buff and a spell called Hellfire Arrow, plus the ability to speak and understand the Infernal language in all forms.

  James got some movement buffs for water walking and some kind of kung fu flying steps like the old movies. Bladed Limb sounded pretty cool; it let the user’s body became even more of a weapon. His limbs would become as hard and sharp as mithral for a short time. Not to mention ice-type abilities courtesy of Winterheart.

  Balmur got a little house spell that seemed cool, his own fireball spell, and another utility spell I hadn’t opted to get of my own—polymorph. It turned a targeted creature into a less threatening creature—here’s hoping I get to see a chicken!

  Bokaj wanted to leave his a surprise but did let us know that his were some heavy hitters and a trap, so we left it alone.

  My own, though, mine seemed interesting. One was called Star Fall; it summoned a shower of stars in a thirty-foot radius. Seemed like a crowd control spell to me. The other was a fear spell called Predator’s Call. It instilled fear in a target and potentially caused them to lose focus or be unable to move. The first spell was intensely expensive at three hundred MP. One cast and I was down to a fourth of my total mana. Predator’s was much more manageable at fifty MP per cast, but it had a one minute cool-down time. So, I did what I believed right and channeled the new spell into my ring of storage. While I was thinking about it, I had Bokaj give me a few of his mithril-tipped arrows. While I meditated and recovered my mana, I thought about a way to store spells and trigger them on impact.

  Sure, I could give these arrows elemental damage, and that would be really nice and all. However, if I could store a more powerful spell and have that be unleashed without the direct mana cost to me, that would give us a huge advantage.

  I looked at the ring on my finger. The design was simple—a circular swirling pattern around the stone that held the mana of the stored spell inside, which then led to where the focus was inside an unbroken pentacle—like the one Yohsuke used to summon the Demon. I mimicked the design of the ring onto the arrow, taking my time to get everything right. The swirling lines I engraved went up and back away from the tip of the arrow but circled it much the same.

  I didn’t have the stone necessary to “store” a spell. The trigger for our rings was intent. You focused on the spell stored in the ring, and the mana gets released in the form of the desired reaction.

  With the idea I had though, maybe impact could be the trigger. The spell would be stored in the tip where the impact would “break” the pentacle and act as intent and release the spell. I was going to kick the shit out of myself if this worked and I could’ve been doing this all along.

  I took a deep breath and envisioned the pentagram perfectly positioned with the center being penetrated by the tip of the arrowhead. After looking over my work, I filled the engravi
ng around the pentagram on the tip. It was steady, grueling work, and my training with the hag paid off because I didn’t screw it up. The mana I was going to be using to fill the swirls around the arrowhead itself would come when the spell was cast onto and “stored” in the desired location.

  “Ah. Pleasant spell theory there, little Druid,” Winterheart grumbled at me. He was looking over my shoulder, and I had been so focused I didn’t feel his presence. “Humor a curious ancient, what do you intend to use that for?”

  I explained my thoughts to him, and he nodded sagely.

  “Close the pentagram except for a small portion before you try to store the spell, then as you store it, close the circle. That may help keep the spell there and from leaking out before the desired time.”

  I thought about what he meant and tried it out. It took about ten or twelve arrows before I finally managed one; I lost count—don’t judge me.

  I was so excited that I moved too quickly and jabbed my thumb with the tip. My stomach lurched, and I swear I was the asshole coyote on the wrong side of the cliff before the fall in that moment.

  I felt the electric jolt from the stored Lightning Bolt shoot through my body, and I fell to my knees. I stuttered a mild swear and fell to my face. The arrow disintegrated and blew away.

  “Fuck, man, you okay?” Jaken asked. He put a hand on my shoulder, and my health leapt back up to mostly full.

  “I fucked up. Okay. I got this. Gimme six arrows, Bokaj. I got some shit here for you, brother.” I sat up with a grunt and held my hand out.

  “You’re killing my stash, man. Shit. Gimme some of that stuff, though, and I’ll be good.” He smiled and handed me six arrows and left me to my work.

  I made another of the Lightning Bolt arrows, then looked at Winterheart and grinned.

  “Wanna help me test this one out, big guy?”

  “I am not a ‘big guy,’” the Ancient Dragon huffed indignantly, “nor am I a target to be shot at by a tiny archer.”

  “Oh.” I gave him a defeated look and nodded. “You’re right, I apologize.”