Beyond the Sapphire Gate: Epic Fantasy-Some Magic Should Remain Untouched (The Flow of Power Book 1)

by R. V. Johnson

  Atoi seemed to have the most endless supply of energy. The little girl flitted ahead, and then slowed to allow Crystalyn time to clomp near, her tiny feet barely scratching the terrain.

  The wagon trail narrowed, diving into a muddy ravine. The Lore Mother slowed, but didn’t hesitate to drive the shire inside. From the rear, Crystalyn had a disconcerting image of the horse, rider and wagon vanishing into a sinkhole, swallowed without a sound. A few aching footsteps later, she was relieved to know her fears were groundless. The Lore Mother popped out of the far end of the ravine, sitting vigilant on the seat, steering the shire along the road ahead. Crystalyn trudged into the ravine after. They passed by crumbling ledges jutting outward, closing in on the wagon, then slowly march away. Atoi stayed nearby for a while in companionable silence, and then suddenly bolted ahead to the ledge wall. Crystalyn watched her go, too tired to tell her to watch her step. Crystalyn moved ahead only because her companions did. Not long ago, she would have jumped at the chance for a hike in real mountains and breathe clean air while exercising her cardiovascular system and burn calories. Not that she needed it; weight had never been an issue for her or Jade. One of the many good things handed down from their mom.

  A sharp twinge reminded her again of her failure to heal the spiderbee punctures. She still hadn’t told her companions. The last thing she wanted was for the search to stall longer as she healed. Broth knew, but he’d simply voiced his concern and moved on, well, expressed his concern, anyway.

  Using cracks as handholds and tiny toeholds for support, Atoi sprang onto a smaller ledge as the trail widened. Peering down, the little girl kept pace as Crystalyn marched by, trying not to hold her palm on her stomach. So far, the seepage seemed to have stabilized.

  “How does one survive on your world?” Atoi asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You stumble after a short hike on easy terrain. Do your people all rely on horses to pack them around?”

  Crystalyn regarded the girl who’d been ten seasons for more than four hundred seasons, in silence. How long could one host an alien entity and retain some semblance of oneself? Was she dealing with the host now, or the Dark Child? One instant she was an amiable companion, the next she seemed to want to instigate an argument. Hopefully, her day-to-day experience with the girl from now on would provide the clues she needed to make an accurate judgment. For now, she’d send the girl off on her own; she didn’t feel too companionable now. All she wanted was rest.

  Slipping around a jagged outcropping of brown stone, Atoi dropped onto a narrower ledge without adjusting a single stride.

  “While you’re listening to the Naturists conversations,” Crystalyn said, ignoring the girl’s opening comment. “Find out where those bloody obelisks are attuned to, like I asked. I would’ve thought you’d gathered something by now. Do you need to hone your skills?”

  A flicker of annoyance crinkled Atoi’s youthful face. She vaulted from the ledge, landing softly in the rocky grass. Sprinting away, she passed Lore Rayna, then Broth, disappearing around a bend in the steep canyon.

  Crystalyn sniffed. It served the entity, or Atoi, right for making fun of her. Granted, she was out of shape, but that didn’t mean she had to have a reminder of it. It was likely not one of her companions would know what it was to fight an irrepressible illness while being the sole earner of credits for their family. What debts could they possibly have? Cudgel seemed to be the financial man for Lore Rayna and the Lore Mother; he’d paid Hastel with a gold coin for their stay at the Muddy Wagon Inn. Atoi had yet to pay for anything, but Hastel seemed to believe she was loaded.

  Broth would have no use for coin or credits living away from humans. He would simply take what he needed from Astura by hunting wild creatures and drinking the plentiful water. She hated to think of it, but he did have to eat. He wasn’t a grazer, therefore he was a carnivore, and likely, a proficient one; his sleek body and boundless energy indicated a healthy diet.

  Thinking of her companion, her eye sought him, Broth loped around a sharp bend in the trail, vanishing from sight, as the ravine leveled out to open mountainside again. A pebble caught at Crystalyn’s boot. She stumbled. Could she make it until they rested? Think positive and make it through the day. Think positive…make it through. Another litany from lockdown blossomed from her memory. What worked before, should work again. Technically, she could call for a halt at any time since she was running the show, but was not worth an admonishment from the Lore Mother. Crystalyn could hear her now, grouching about how far they still had to travel. Perhaps there would be a nice stream flowing through a vibrant meadow with a watering hole around the bend. She could then justify it on the pretense of refilling water and…

  Take cover Do’brieni, ambush!

  Broth’s urgency flowed through the link, bringing a powerful image of dark funnels of swirling energy arcing through the sky above a bowl-shaped green meadow. Crystalyn fought for equilibrium as the image widened, encompassing a larger field of view, the rim of the bowl springing into focus. Black armored soldiers stood in an ominous shoulder-to-shoulder line across the farthest side. Atoi stepped from rock to rock, as she crossed a stream, oblivious to the dark power arcing across the sky. Opening her mouth, Crystalyn drew in a full breath to shout a warning, only to find herself back with the rest of her companions. “Everyone, prepare for battle! Someone is attacking Atoi at the next bend!” Hastel glanced sharply her direction, and then sped for the horses. Cudgel and Lore Rayna fell back to the wagon, protecting it on both sides. The Lore Mother allowed Hastel the time it took to untie Ferral, and then whipped the reins. Drumn leaped ahead.

  Racing behind the wagon, Crystalyn’s rising anxiety bled away, leaving behind a rigid calmness, two sentences resounded in her mind.

  Atoi’s just a kid. She needs protection.

  Aching knees and seeping wound shunted aside, she ran.

  Rounding the bend, Crystalyn drew up short. She’d read the link image wrong. Or Broth had sent it with his perception. The trail descended into an ancient crater overgrown with grass and littered with tumbleweeds. A stream cut through the center. Two small copses of aspen trees blossomed on two sides. From her higher vantage point, Crystalyn could see Broth had been right about the ambush, but wrong about the target. Atoi wasn’t the target, though she was running toward them.

  A man and a woman stood alone in the meadow, hands locked together. The woman’s free palm stretched to the sky, the man’s at the ground. A glowing, transparent bubble encompassed her and her companion. A barrage of black cones flew toward the bubble, launched from three directions by black-robed figures hiding in the midst of black armored soldiers. Like miniature, swirling black holes, the cones swallowed light as they went, trailing a wake of darkness through the sky. Drilling in upon impact, the cones left behind raging maelstroms as big as a wagon wheel. The black maelstroms deflected off the couple’s shield bubble, boring small craters around it, before losing energy and disseminating into wisps of smoke. In the forefront of the dark army, black-armored men and women fought silver armored figures.

  Atoi popped out of the wide gully, still on the wagon trail. Sprinting in a zigzag pattern, the young girl’s tiny, swift-moving legs closed the distance between her and the two holding hands under the shrinking dome. What was she doing? Crystalyn wondered.

  A black cone streaked toward Atoi from the copse of cedar trees at the bowl’s rim on Crystalyn’s left side, exposing another group of ambushers. Thinking furiously, Crystalyn entwined three black aggression symbols into one shadowy offensive symbol. Hexagram in shape, the symbol’s intertwining lines and black rose shapes, writhed like constrictor vines caught in a burning garden of roses. Beautiful and powerful, the symbol streaked toward the cedar trees, trailing smoky garlands of its pattern, her most intricate yet.

  But she was already too late: the cone would reach Atoi first.

  Oblivious to the danger from above, Atoi dashed behind a large granite boulder next to the ro
ad. The swirling cone slammed into the rock. A thunderous crack rent the air. Dust and rock chips mushroomed into the air.

  Crystalyn’s lucidity changed to the surreal. The dust cloud slowed, rolling upward and outward languidly. Broth raced slowly into view, loping frame by frame from a distant tree line, moving toward the cloud. The Lore Mother descended the wagon into the small ravine of the creek bed, both front wheels leaving the ground. Cudgel and Lore Rayna sprinted away from the gully, their ground-eating strides looking like giant leaps. Reins flapping ever so slowly, Hastel sailed past the Lore Mother on Ferral, heedless of the two cones arcing toward him from atop the bowl.

  Wrenched back to normalcy, Crystalyn’s mind sped up, allowing her to assess the situation with stark, split-second clarity. The barrage on the dome continued. With each hit, it inched closer to the couple, collapsing slowly inward. Strewn beyond them, armored, robed, and some odd-skinned bodies lay crumpled beside splintered wagons, some still burning. A sickly sweet odor wafted through the air.

  Crystalyn’s eyes slid from the carnage at the bottom of the bowl to the attacking forces positioned on three sides at the top. Whoever had planned the ambush had set the trap well—perhaps too well for her little group to handle careening headlong into it as they had. There was no choice but to battle on, as strung out as everyone was now.

  The main enemy force stood guarding a company of black and red-robed Users where the wagon trail climbed from the bowl. Beyond them, Crystalyn made out a contingent of bows. On the left and right, she spotted additional robed enemies using a copse of cedar trees for cover on each side, though some had lost their cover. Her symbol had ripped through most of the left side, leaving the fifteen or so Dark Users still standing, but exposed.

  Surprisingly, Atoi exploded from the dust cloud at full speed.

  Three oblong projectiles shot from the trees on the right, almost as soon as the little girl did, leaving angry red glows trailing in their wake. Each projectile turned as one, arcing toward Atoi as she ran.

  Working as fast as she could, Crystalyn sent the first symbol she thought about on an intercept course toward the bolts of energy. Expanding into concentric circles as it went; her knockback symbol struck the first two missiles, exploding them on contact. The third wavered slightly, but continued on, striking Atoi in the chest.

  No! She’d been so close. Preparing a symbol—bigger this time—she sent her smoky garland into the trees on the right. For one beat of her fearful heart, the enormous hexagon symbol hung in stasis above the trees, imprinting its intricate rose design in fiery red in the sky. Then it imploded inward. The area inside the pattern rippled the fabric of the sky, turning it as black as an impending storm. Building to an immense pressure, it drew from the air trapped within the hexagon; she could hear and feel it, even over the screams of the battle. Once charged, the symbol released a booming concussive ring downward, flattening anything caught inside its diameter. In its wake, tattered robes fluttered above shattered rocks and splintered wood floating above a dense cloud of dust.

  Averting her eyes from the former copse, she spotted Atoi lying crumpled on her side. The bolt had hurled her yards across the meadow. A wisp of smoke spiraled up from an ugly burn on her tiny chest.

  Anxiety for her little companion arose from the familiar place in her stomach. Atoi was badly hurt. Crystalyn panicked, looking wildly around at the devastation. Pocked with craters big and small, the shattered landscape, littered with torn and bloody corpses wearing white robes, and gleaming armor, angered her. Had the enemy ambushed them too? She chose to believe so, fueling her anger. Crystalyn reveled in the anger, which speared her panic, thrusting through it like a flaming sword and calming her with an almost boiling clarity. The enemy would seek her next, but she would be prepared. A beautiful white symbol bloomed in her mind in the shape of a cross. The weave of the pattern was long. It twisted and turned, weaving around and under itself, back and forth, up and down, until finally coming back to its point of origin. Unraveling it in her mind’s eye, Crystalyn combined it with three other white ones. On an impulse, she redrew them all and centered the whole within a black, circular pattern where the white crosses flowed along an intricate, swirling design. The now dark symbol felt rubbery but durable, almost plasicrete in consistency. Releasing the new symbol, Crystalyn floated it outward a few feet from her, stretching it to the ground while expanding it sideways and upwards, visualizing a wall. Separating an end of the symbol, she secured it to her movements just as a barrage of black cones and red bolts struck. Every hit felt like the biting gnats that gathered around ponds at the Farm, but her symbol held. The bombardment deflected from the symbol, and detonated around her. Dirt and pebbles rained down on her head.

  A wave of weakness washed through her. The ground rose up to meet her; suddenly she was on her hands and knees. The wall wavered violently.

  You are strong, Do’brieni. Do not falter!

  Clutching strength from the link, Crystalyn tightened her will on the wall, drawing a roof on it, expanding it over her head. Blackness welled in her mind, overtaking the headache. A great weariness permeated her to the core. She needed rest. A couple minutes would do it. She was so tired. With her symbol sheltering her, nothing could hurt her. Five quick minutes, what would it harm?

  No. Atoi was down. She needed to keep going. What would her dad say? He’d want her to do whatever it took to save a life; the Great Father knew he’d protected many throughout his lifetime. She had to try, even if the life in need had nearly killed her upon her arrival. A persistent memory of her first encounter with Atoi—one of her first on Astura, nagged at her. She reached into her pack.

  The pall of weariness lifted. Physically touching the black candle made the difference, clarity bloomed sharp and vibrant, bringing with it a sense of surprise and chagrin from many minds.

  Getting angrier by the moment, Crystalyn realized the Dark Users had changed tactics and stepped up their attack. While some Users had rained dark cones and projectiles on her wall, others made a concerted effort to dismantle the symbol by attacking the mind behind it.

  The parasitic link was easy to find. Where Broth’s link was a bright and shiny beacon in her mind, the new one strove for a sense of nothingness. That—in itself— was a mistake. There was never “nothing” in her mind. Something was always happening; her thoughts and emotions whirled about in constant activity. She’d never been able to control it, and even though she was constantly telling herself to find her inner calmness, she never had. Gathering her pent-up rage, Crystalyn concentrated on the intrusion and flowed into the dark link. Many minds hastily joined the ones there, expecting to sweep away her anger and lock her inside herself, alone with her wrath.

  Crystalyn snarled aloud, like an animal trapped in its den, its place of sanctuary. She forced her way farther into the link, throwing her rage to the forefront. The dark link shrank away from her gnashing, afflicted, fury. Crystalyn let go, letting it lash out unconstrained. Her perfect storm of fury constricted to a single tube, roared along the violating link, reaching the minds in an instant, it gusted through their cerebrums like a violent gale of neurotic wind. As one, the minds collapsed in gibbering terror.

  Crystalyn closed the foul thing with the same technique she’d used on Broth when his exuberance had gotten too strong, by diminishing it. This time, she compressed it smaller until it was a speck, then she squeezed it with a thought until it burst to nothing. Angry thoughts of revenge took its place, fueled from a new desire to build a barrier no one would get through without her consent.

  Broth, are you there?

  Broth’s response was immediate. I am coming, Do’brieni, almost there.

  No! You’ll only draw their fire. They cannot hurt me for now. Try to circle around and attack them from behind. She added an image of the Warden stalking from out of the trees by the upper trail.

  As you wish, Broth sent. She could sense his reluctance intermixed with a desire to please. He veered away, moving in t
he opposite direction of her attackers.

  Though her mind was now clear, her body felt drained. She forced herself to stand and stumble to Atoi, thankful the physical attack had lessened. The mental assault could no longer cause her harm. Falling to her knees, she scooped the little girl up in her arms. On her feet again, she reeled from the weight. For only having the body of ten seasons, the girl was heavy. What had she expected? She had a mere twelve seasons on Atoi and probably only outweighed her by fifty or sixty pounds. Leaning back, she draped Atoi’s head over one shoulder, carrying her like a toddler. The simple act reminded her of when a young Jade had fallen asleep in her arms, bringing tears to eyes. It also freed one hand for carrying the black candle. Pushing her tears aside, she blinked her vision clear and focused on the backside of the clear dome. Shuffling toward it, she kept an eye on the rest of her companions.

  Not far away, Hastel winced as his crossbow and an axe smacked a rock when he dismounted in the gully. He flattened himself against the stream’s western bank. A black cone slammed into the rocky eastern bank behind him. Rocks clattered like a giant game of throw stones played by powerful beings. Many medium-sized chunks thumped against his torso armor, but somehow his head and legs escaped damage.

  Another cone slammed into the western bank a yard ahead of him. Gathering his legs under him, he bolted to the spot, staying hunched over and hugging the bow to his waist, betting another cone wouldn’t land in the same crater. Seconds later, he bolted upstream. With a start, Crystalyn realized he was drawing the enemy fire away from the others, away from her and Atoi.

  Explosions left both sides of the upstream banks pocked; some landed close enough to rain mud and water down on him. Hastel slowed to wipe his eye clear and then sprinted to a place where the stream had carved banks tall enough for him to stand.

  He made better time upright, splashing upstream through ankle-deep water, holding to the western edge. As he rounded a rocky bend, Crystalyn almost lost sight of him as he barreled into stunted trees growing along the banks, but then he slowed, realizing at some point the barrage had ended. Scrambling atop the stream bank, he pulled an arrow tipped with a glass vial from the quiver on his back.