Caught in the Ripples_An Epic Fantasy

by S McPherson

  ‘The pillars, the thrones,’ Milo indicates with a flick of his head. ‘We learnt about it in Years of Coltis.’

  His two companions only stare blankly back.

  ‘When the Vildacruz first infiltrated Taratesia?’

  ‘Look, some of us were given brains and some of us were given looks,’ Howard says, waving a lazy hand from Milo to himself.

  Milo arches an eyebrow. ‘The pillars were the divide between empires, each new member made to stand in their allotted place to prove why their ability would be useful to the Court.’

  Yvane snorts, ‘I suppose very few Premoniters were chosen.’

  Howard scoffs, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d be a rotting mass in one of those caves.’

  ‘Precisely, mate. And as a matter of fact, countless Premoniters were initiated into the Court,’ Milo points out.

  Yvane half smiles. She can’t help occasionally feeling like a goldfish surrounded by sharks; teleportation, unbeatable strength, the fortitude of gifts bestowed upon Lexovia. It’s hard to feel otherwise when her own parents barely believe in their gift.

  Howard circles the pillars, clearly trying to make out the fragmented symbols of the empires. He comes to one that is barely a pillar at all, most of it a heap of rubble on the floor. Its middle is largely missing, and what remains looks like a wrung out wet towel. Howard whistles; ‘I bet this was the Elentri.’

  Milo and Yvane join him, admiring the column’s destruction.

  ‘I doubt they were ever denied,’ Milo says. There is something in his tone that makes Yvane sure he is thinking of Lexovia, missing the good old days, before they were forced into war, before she was just the Court’s weapon. Milo sighs, ‘Let’s get to Vladimir’s chamber.’

  ‘Fourth floor,’ Howard says.

  As soon as Milo’s hands are held by his friends, he transports them to Vladimir’s chamber.

  ‘Iginassa,’ the three intone and immediately the chamber is lit as the many torches hanging from their brass wall brackets are set alight.

  ‘That was lucky,’ Milo chuckles. ‘Didn’t have a clue what we might set on fire.’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter,’ Howard notes. ‘Any damage done would be chalked up to Feasting Season.’

  Yvane gulps. In the midst of their adventure she had somehow forgotten the reason for it: Dezaray is gone, captured by the Exlathars, Lexovia is in Islon doing who knows what and Feasting Season has begun. Everyone is hiding underground, and rightly so, everyone except them.

  ‘Let’s get this over with,’ she breathes, rushing over to an oak, oval desk in the centre of the room that stands on a thin beige rug laid on the dark chestnut floorboards. A quaint fireplace lined with redbrick is set into the cobble stoned wall beyond, above which hangs a shield, scabbard and a pair of matching swords. Both hilts and the shield are embossed with the crest of Coldivor. Great wooden beams arch and stretch across the ceiling as if pulling it together, making the room appear smaller than it is.

  Yvane hauls open one of the desk drawers. ‘What are we looking for?’ she asks as she rifles through pieces of parchment stained with snickleberry text.

  ‘A map,’ Milo murmurs as he pulls back the doors of black cabinets lining the length of one wall. ‘It had all the Exlathar bases marked out on it.’

  ‘So that’s your plan,’ Howard nods idly, lifting the cushions on a burgundy armchair facing a curved leaded window: ‘suicide.’

  LITTLE GIRL

  Lexovia pushes on the door, wincing when it creaks open, a low whine as it swings in. She steps into the room, the floral shaded lamp on the bedside table casting shadows on the textured wall. Her eyes feel gritty, as though a fistful of sand lay within, and her body is heavy, weighed down by exhaustion. She squints, expecting to see Michaela beneath the quilt, but the bedclothes are flat, undisturbed. Puzzled, she turns and finds Michaela curled up on the salmon armchair by the window.

  ‘I thought you would be in bed,’ Lexovia yawns, pulling off her heavy boots and flexing her toes.

  ‘No,’ Michaela replies, absently. ‘Just got out of the bath.’

  Lexovia stretches lazily. ‘The bath is going to have to wait for me. I’m shattered.’ She wriggles out of her black combat pants and pulls the long white t-shirt Jude lent her from under the pillow.

  ‘They warned us,’ Michaela muses, speaking so softly she could be speaking to herself, ‘the night they came to me and demanded I stop talking about Coldivor. They said they’d seen the monsters in my world and they intended to keep them there.’

  Lexovia shudders at her sinister tone as she slips the t-shirt over her head and clambers into bed.

  ‘What are they like?’ Michaela asks.

  ‘Who?’ Lexovia mumbles, already only half awake.

  ‘The “monsters”?’ and Michaela uses her fingers as quotation marks. ‘The Vildacruz.’

  A knot tightens in Lexovia’s stomach but she rolls over to face Michaela, her usual picture of nonchalance. ‘You never saw them?’

  Michaela shakes her head. ‘I haven’t been to Coldivor since the ban was put in place.’

  ‘That was almost twenty years ago!’ Lexovia gasps.

  The corners of Michaela’s mouth twitch as she returns her attention to the cloudless night, peppered with stars that shine like diamonds.

  Lexovia pushes her tumbling fringe out of her eyes; she is well overdue a trim. ‘I remember the night they found out about me.’ It occurs to her that she hasn’t spoken about that night much if at all since it happened. ‘I was twelve and oh so tired of being the last Elentrice: the constant surveillance, curfews, training, rules.’ Lexovia flings her arms over her head as if to block out the memories. ‘Oh, the rules!’

  ‘Sounds dreadful,’ Michaela notes, still gazing idly out of the window.

  ‘Milo never treated me any different, though. He saw past what I was and got to know who I was. He never told me I couldn’t do something because of this, that or the other. In fact, he told me I could do anything.’ Lexovia smiles, fondly, a lump of sadness swelling in her throat. ‘When, for the third year in a row, I was told I couldn’t go on the class field trip to the Portologists headquarters because of how close it is to Taratesia, I got…pissed.’

  Michaela snickers but says nothing.

  ‘Before that, they told me I was too young to go, and not trained enough, but by that point I’d been training most of my life. Was I going to be a prisoner forever?’

  ‘I suppose they were trying to keep you safe.’ Michaela has turned slightly in her seat.

  Lexovia shakes her head. ‘I was just an object to them. A weapon. Anyway,’ she sighs heavily, ‘that night, Milo and I snuck out. I was determined to discover the wonders outside of Melaxous; beyond their prying eyes and all of their restrictions.’

  ‘So, you went to Taratesia.’

  ‘We went to Taratesia.’ Lexovia smiles. ‘It was brilliant. We wandered for ages, but finally entered non-Coltis territory. The change from gravel and sand to actual grass was…’ but she can’t find the right word and sighs. ‘Even the climate was different: cooler, the air smelled sweeter, like that yellowish-orange fruit we had just now.’ She looks questioningly at Michaela.

  ‘Mango.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lexovia nods, her eyes now closing as sleep tugs at her mind, but she forces herself to go on: ‘We walked and walked, laughing and planning to return there as often as possible. Then Milo saw old Telathrodon. He recognised the trees from the many stories he was told about his old home. The braided trees; gigantic things with winding trunks and these long branches that stretch down from the top of them, with great big leaves, fruits and vines hanging from them, coming down so low that if Milo stood on his tiptoes he could pick the agleshens.

  ‘That’s what he was about to do when we heard the thud of feet landing behind us: a Borum Wolf on its hind legs and a pale-skinned vampire.’ Lexovia scowls. ‘“Bugger” was the only thing I said.’

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything mor
e fitting.’ Michaela has turned the chair around now, giving Lexovia her undivided attention.

  ‘The vampire cocked his head to one side, staring me up and down. His hair was so white it seemed silver.

  ‘Then the wolf started sniffing. It went down on all fours and howled. I’ll never forget that howl. It made my skin crawl. Then suddenly the vampire was off the ground and gliding towards me.

  ‘“My friend here reckons you reek of Elentri blood. I like blood,” he said,’ Lexovia recounts what the creature had said, word for word, every facet of that evening as familiar to her as her own name. ‘Then he told me he didn’t like Elentri and exposed his fangs, the whites of his eyes turning black, and he got me by the throat, lifting me off the ground and sniffing my hair.

  ‘I begged then; I begged for them to let us go. But he—’ Lexovia gulps, as if swallowing a too large pill, ‘But he just licked my face and sneered. That’s when something came over Milo.

  ‘He grabbed my hand, and with a wave of his finger, we were gone. Only, the vampire came with us, still clutching my neck. He laughed and a ray of black sprang from his eyes, sending Milo spiralling through the air. I screamed. I’d never felt so helpless; frozen by fear.

  ‘Then a wave of arrows came out of nowhere, plunging into the vampire. He roared, turning to his attackers and dropping me. I scuttled over to Milo as fast as I could. I remember thinking “He isn’t moving. Why isn’t he moving?” and then I stopped and watched as seemingly every adult in Melaxous charged towards the vampire with spears, blazing arrows and flying hexes.

  ‘I shut my eyes. I didn’t need to see what happened next, but I know the vampire ended up headless and poor Mr Richards ended up paralysed from the waist down; definitely one of the worse fates for a Spee’ad.’ Lexovia almost swallows her last sentence into a yawn.

  Michaela has by now left her chair and is sitting on the bed beside Lexovia. Hesitantly, she reaches out and softly strokes Lexovia’s silver tresses.

  ‘It must have been very scary…being you,’ she says.

  Lexovia rolls onto her stomach, rubbing sleep from her eyes. ‘Terrifying.’

  When Lexovia wakes the next morning, she is alone in the bed. She stretches, no idea what time it is, but the sun is high enough in the sky for it to be midday. She studies the clock on the bedside table, trying to make sense of its numbers and lines, but nothing makes sense. Giving up, she rolls out of bed and stuffs her feet into the too-large slippers Mrs Edwards gave her.

  Smacking her cheeks, she brings some colour to her skin and briefly ruffles her fingers through her hair. Her stomach gurgles, as if on cue, and she lazily makes her way out onto the landing and down the narrow staircase.

  The house is quiet and she wonders if everyone is still asleep or have gone out for the day. A note on the fridge answers her question. Pulling off the yellow square of paper with its line of something sticky on its back, Lexovia reads: ‘Didn’t want to wake you. Gone to the Bar & Grill. Join us.’.

  Lexovia again stretches. She really didn’t feel like getting dressed today but reluctantly heads back upstairs. She rummages in the wardrobe, through the small stack of clothes Dezaray has left there. Then, to her delight, she finds a thin leather belt rolled up on one of the shelves. Pulling it out, she wraps it around her waist, adding shape to the otherwise unflattering t-shirt. Lexovia steps back, judging her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

  Acceptable.

  She kicks off the slippers and puts her feet into her familiar boots. Another glance in the mirror. Perfect.

  Lexovia squints against the sunshine as she nears the Bar & Grill. Is that Jude coming towards her?

  ‘Where are you off to?’ she asks.

  ‘Need to keep my magic hands strong,’ he announces, flexing his fingers in and out, as if imitating something flashing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Every so often, I go up to the tree on the hill,’ which he indicates with a nod of his head, ‘and practice some spells, and what have you. Interested?’

  Lexovia considers. ‘What’s it like in there?’ she then asks, eyeing the door of the Bar & Grill.

  ‘Relatively the same,’ he shrugs. ‘Feels a bit like being in a fishbowl, though. Everyone’s watching Michaela. Imogen’s taken her under her wing.’

  ‘Can you imagine the commotion if the last Elentrice waltzes in?’ Lexovia gasps as though expressing something scandalous.

  Jude chuckles. ‘The crowd would be all in a tizzy,’ he exclaims, imitating her outrage. They laugh. ‘So…you with me?’

  Lexovia sighs, ‘I suppose. Just don’t do the hands thing again.’

  ‘What? This?’ Jude asks with an all too innocent smile, and once again flexes his fingers.

  Lexovia shakes her head, pushing him aside as they begin their stroll to the top of the hill.

  ‘That’s a lot of judgement, coming from a girl who’s wearing nothing but the t-shirt she slept in,’ he goads.

  ‘Oh, shut up.’

  ‘Sacrilege.’ He tuts, shaking his head as he saunters past.

  Not keen on him having the last word but without a retort, Lexovia races past, deliberately bumping him with her shoulder as she does. He accepts the challenge and tears off after her, both pushing on up the hill, battling against the wind.

  Lexovia is well in the lead, smiling proudly.

  ‘A girl in a t-shirt who can outrun you,’ she hollers at him once she reaches the top, leaning triumphantly against the tree. Yes! The final word!

  ‘Touché,’ Jude pants as he collapses on the ground beside her. Long blades of grass creep into his nostrils but he is clearly too exhausted to care. ‘I’m definitely going to have to get in better shape to outrun R.U.O.E.’

  Lexovia slides down the thick trunk of the tree, finally hugging her knees to her chest. She considers telling him it won’t come to that, that the problem will somehow resolve itself without involving him, but the words refuse to leave her mouth. They both know they aren’t true.

  ‘I could teach you,’ she says at last.

  Jude turns his head to face her. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know any of R.U.O.E.’s tactics, but I can show you what it’s like to fight an Exlathar.’

  ‘I imagine if I can fight one of them, I can fight just about anything.’

  Lexovia nods. ‘It’s a fair guess.’

  ‘Are they really as powerful as they say?’

  ‘They have about as many powers as I do.’ Lexovia frowns. ‘Flight, strength, speed—though not as fast as a Spee’ad.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Jude gasps, propping himself up on his elbows. ‘Did you just use your Spee’ad strength against me?’

  Lexovia clamps her lips tightly together, quelling a burgeoning smile. ‘Maybe a little,’ she eventually allows, showing him a small distance between her thumb and index finger.

  ‘You little sneak!’ Jude howls.

  ‘Enough of that,’ and Lexovia stands, hopping from foot to foot. ‘Fight me!’

  In the mood to show her what-for, Jude gets to his feet. ‘Exlarvus,’ he intones, though not too harshly, not wanting to cause any serious damage.

  Lexovia leaps out of the way of the spell and immediately her rapidly shimmering outline appears behind him. ‘BOO,’ and she laughs as Jude swivels around.

  ‘Exlarvus!’ he again bellows, more forcefully this time, no doubt sure Lexovia can handle anything he throws at her.

  Once again, she shimmers away in true Spee’ad form.

  ‘Be swift, little girl,’ she teases.

  ‘Little girl?’ he screeches.

  Lexovia shrugs. ‘That’s what my trainer used to say. Now I’m training you.’

  A pained expression crosses Jude’s face. ‘He used to say “Be swift, little girl”?’

  Lexovia stiffens, feeling all humour has now gone from her eyes. She runs her fingers through her hair, somewhere regretting coming up here.

  ‘How little were you, exactly?’r />
  Lexovia um’s and ah’s as if struggling to remember, ‘About four, I guess.’ She says at last. She hadn’t noticed Jude come in front of her, not until his firm arms pull her against him, locking her head against his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t need a hug.’ She tries to laugh, but deep down she can’t seem to find what’s funny.

  ‘I do,’ Jude clearly lies, holding her closer. ‘I need a hug, little girl.’

  SOLITARY SHRUB

  I sit, trembling, for what feels like decades. The cries of the creatures have ebbed and now I only hear the odd movement as they go about their lives, unaware of how close I am. I sigh, though not too loud. My muscles are beginning to ache and there’s an agonising twinge forming in my bent neck. I shift, wriggling my backside deeper into the moist soil but not getting any more comfortable. My knee jerks, my foot slipping closer and closer to the edge. Perhaps I could stretch them out, just for a little while.

  About to satisfy my throbbing limbs, I quickly draw my knees back against my chest and out of sight as a raucous cry and a blast of air lets me know a gang of them have just passed by. I hold my breath, my heart galloping—a thundering clickity-clack—and a familiar feeling of dread washes over me.

  Screeches, deafening screeches that send jolts of agony through me, siren out as sharp as razors, bouncing off the walls. I grit my teeth, gnashing so viciously I’m sure they will grind through to the bone. At last the howling stops and the odd word sails towards me on the wind of their raging wings.

  ‘Gone!’ one of them shrieks.

  I know they are talking about me. It was only a matter of time. I push myself further into the crevice, actually contemplating digging my way out through the back. I close my eyes—if I can’t see them, then perhaps they can’t see me. I know I’m full of it, even as I think it, but I hold still in the hope it just might come true.

  More frantic shrieks and snarls explode and then the flurried thunder of stampeding feet and the arresting scrape of what seems like a thousand angry wings pass by. The wind is next: a harsh and furious gust that slams into me like a block of ice as they swarm past, leaving me breathless, leaving me cold. It takes all I have inside me not to scream.