Crisanta Knight: To Death & Back

by Geanna Culbertson

  I tilted my head. “Natalie?”

  Natalie perked up. She stepped closer to the invisible wall between us but didn’t appear to notice its presence, or mine.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  Excitement filled my chest.

  “I’m here!” I shouted.

  Alas, Natalie couldn’t see me. Whatever dreamscape she was in only allowed my voice to seep through. I pressed both hands against the force field and bent down. Natalie’s face was inches from mine, but she had no idea. She gazed into the distance behind me.

  “Natalie,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Um, a little,” Natalie said nervously. I noticed that the flowers and swirls of the sky in the background had turned gray. The clouds thickened and began to cluster together. The butterflies paused like they’d been frozen in time.

  I understood what was happening. When Liza first tried to contact me through my dreams our connection wasn’t very strong, so communication was difficult. I couldn’t see Liza in the beginning; I could only hear her. And even so, we only had seconds to talk before her voice faded out. I had to choose my words carefully and quickly.

  “Natalie, listen. There’s a girl named Tara. You have to watch out for her. She’s bad.”

  “Hello?” Natalie began looking up at the sky again. “I … I can’t hear you. You said something about a Tara? What’s a Tara?”

  “Tara’s a girl,” I said louder.

  “What? I can’t—”

  “Natalie, beware of Tara.” I banged my fist against the force field, causing the energy to violently ripple. “Beware Tara Gold!”

  Natalie’s side of the world went dark. Then everything went dark.

  The sounds of crickets filled my ears. I opened my eyes and saw the glowing embers of a campfire and several girls in red who were keeping watch around it. I rolled to my side and sat up.

  “Daniel,” I said, shaking my sleeping friend’s arm.

  He grunted and shrugged me off. I shook him harder. “Daniel,” I repeated.

  He grunted again, but this time he opened his eyes. Seeing the urgency in my face, he sat up. “What’s wrong?”

  “I did it,” I said. “I reached Natalie in her dreams. She couldn’t see me, but my voice got through. It was like when Liza first contacted me in my dreams. My dreamscape collided with hers.”

  “Wait, hold on,” Daniel said, trying to fully wake up. “What are you saying?”

  “Daniel, it finally happened; what Liza has been training me for. I contacted Natalie through her dreams and … she heard me.”

  n the morning we journeyed alongside our herd of red-gowned girls for a few hours until an area of the Shifting Forest opened up to reveal a small kingdom. Having explained that Daniel and I were on a mission, my new friends and I parted ways. The girls intended to make their own treks home but needed to rest and regroup first. They thanked me profusely and wished us luck on our quest ahead.

  So onward we went, trying to find Avalon and our friends along the way. I truly despised the Shifting Forest, but at least I had Daniel to navigate it with me. Although we’d traveled without incident all morning, every time the earth moved and the terrain began to change, I felt the hairs on my arms rise. I couldn’t shake the feeling that any second a magic hunter was going to pop out of the bushes and kill me. Again.

  Ongoing run-ins with the homicidal had been a part of my life for a while now, but I felt a lot less equipped to handle them at the moment. Magic Instinct had taken me far beyond the recommended cease-and-desist point with my powers. Today I was feeling the repercussions. Usually, when my magic was temporarily wiped out, I was tired. Now I felt a simmering soreness underneath my skin that was a deeper level of draining. I had woken up feeling like a piñata at the tail end of a kid’s birthday party. I’m sure I looked it too.

  Despite this, the most worrisome thing was, even with the exhaustion, I sensed power bubbling inside me. I could always feel my magic when I had Magic Exhaustion, even if I couldn’t channel it. But this time was different. In the past when my magic was rebooting, it felt like there was a steel wall that I couldn’t cross until the full rest period was done. Today it felt like that wall was penetrable, as if I could tap into whatever magic was on the other side before I was fully recharged.

  This was bad. My spirit hummed with temptation, trying to convince me I had plenty of power, but logically I doubted if I had the physical strength to sustain it. If I pushed myself too far, I’d reach Magic Burn Out and get obliterated to the point of no return.

  And yet, the magic still itched within me. The irrepressible sensation of power I had experienced yesterday hovered around my shoulders like a phantom.

  I mentioned my Magical Exhaustion to Daniel as we walked, but I didn’t want him to know the full extent of my pain and tiredness. We couldn’t slow our pace. I could keep up just fine when I was properly motivated, and boy did I have plenty of motivation. The Vicennalia Aurora and our one chance to free Paige’s memories from Glinda’s memory stone would come after sunset tomorrow. Arian, Mauvrey, and Alex were racing toward Avalon to claim Excalibur and meet the same deadline. And on top of everything, I had to get to Jason before he was killed.

  Based on the clothes my friends had been wearing, I knew his time was coming. Maybe it was going to happen in a few days, maybe in a few minutes. All I knew for sure was that I had to do everything in my power to beat the clock and reach him before it happened.

  Not that I was sure how much help I would be even if we did find him in time. With this serious case of Magic Exhaustion, the extent of my powers was pretty vague. And if I could channel my powers in this tired state, would I even know how to save Jason? I’d brought myself back to life by accident. I’d killed that giant in the same way. I’d never actively tried to manipulate an already-living being’s life energy. The terrible thought occurred to me: what if I couldn’t? What if I was only that powerful when I relinquished control of my magic and let it take over?

  “Knight, watch out!” Daniel curtly held up his arm, causing me to stop in my tracks. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t seen the covered pit in the ground. Daniel had prevented me from falling into another animal trap.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. Just focus, okay?”

  I nodded and followed after him.

  “I really hope that the magic hunters won’t bother SJ, Blue, and Jason without me around,” I asked, stepping around a mushroom circle in the dirt.

  “Maybe in the past that would’ve been a thing,” he responded. “But there are literally rewards for our kill or capture.”

  As if to prove a point, we passed another tree plastered with Wanted posters. We’d come across them throughout the day. The faces of my friends and I were all over the deeper part of forest. The flier I saw now was for Blue. I raised my eyebrows as I took in the contents. Just like the newspaper we’d read in the citadel, Blue’s Wanted Ad was slightly different than ours. Printed beneath her name was the message: If unable to detain, kill with extreme prejudice. Threat to QB mortality. See authorities for details.

  I still didn’t understand what that meant.

  Suddenly the earth began to move. Daniel and I stopped walking as the tectonic plates of the forest shifted around us. I stayed vigilant as I watched the ground change.

  Daniel and I had been working with very little to go on as we navigated the forest. Jason had our customized Camelot map and we didn’t have Mark Twos to communicate with our friends. I had left mine in my backpack, which I’d lost during the Bluebeard Tower episode. Everything else inside was gone now too. I lamented the loss of my dream journal in particular; there were months of catalogued visions in there.

  Without our customized map or Mark Twos—which might not have worked anyway because of the Shifting Forest—we were left with three tools to navigate to the Isle of Avalon. The first was Gwenivere and Morgan’s advice regarding the Passage Perelous. The second was Dani
el’s memory. He had been with Jason yesterday morning when our allies edited the Camelot map. And the third was our new map.

  We’d acquired a simple map from a bookseller in the kingdom where we’d parted ways with the girls from Bluebeard Tower. It was lucky that Daniel had some money hidden in his left shoe, as my money had been in my backpack. When I asked him about it, Daniel said he always kept a bit of money in his shoe, a habit he’d developed when he was young and spent a good deal of time in the streets.

  “After my parents died, I had to protect the little I had,” he told me. “And I wasn’t that big or strong. Other street kids would always gang up on me. I could outrun or outsmart them most of the time, but a backup plan was always good in case they caught and robbed me.”

  Like it always did, this precious sliver of honesty that Daniel shared caught me off guard and moved me. Unlike earlier in our friendship, now we were comfortable enough with each other that he didn’t make a big deal about it and neither did I.

  The shifting of the forest finally stopped. Our section of the ground had moved and we came upon a small cliff. Leading up to it was a cluster of boulders surrounded by trees. The leaves of the trees were blue, signifying that someone had passed through recently. Hearing voices, I pulled Daniel by the jacket and we crouched behind the boulders, trying to survey the scene below.

  Oh, crud.

  “Open the cave, Nyneve,” said one of the seven magic hunters standing in a half circle around an old woman. The magic hunter wore a burnt-orange scarf and a light brown leather jacket. The men behind him were dressed in similar grungy earth tones, and all of them had weapons. I counted four daggers, one sword, and two bows.

  My mind flashed to the old man in my dreams. “When you find the magic hunters, you’re going to want to hide. I can take care of myself,” he had said.

  I didn’t need to know to hide. But the second half of that statement implied that the old man was nearby. That piqued my interest.

  One of the archers stepped forward and pointed his bow. “Now,” he barked.

  Hm. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to seeing the images in my head blossom into reality.

  While I’d long adjusted to having magic at my fingertips, being able to see glimpses of the future and then witnessing them turn into the present was always unsettling. It made me feel both larger than life and completely powerless.

  Daniel and I watched the old woman—Nyneve. Like I remembered from my dreams, she was shaking with nerves. She stood in front of a cave with an opening that was blocked by a large, smooth stone.

  Nyneve was probably in her late eighties or early nineties. She had white wavy hair and a pasty complexion. Her blue eyes regarded the cave with more fear than she showed for her captors.

  “I am warning you one last time,” she said, pivoting to the hunters. “Moving this stone will bring you nothing but destruction. He is too powerful. You are no match.”

  The hunters dismissed her warning. “Open it,” barked a magic hunter wielding a sword. “We’ll see who is outmatched.”

  Nyneve turned back to the cave and stared at the boulder blocking its entrance.

  I leaned in to Daniel. “I dreamed about this,” I whispered.

  “And?” he whispered back.

  “And nothing. I don’t know what’s behind the stone. I do know her though. Gwenivere told me that Nyneve was Merlin’s half-magic-hunter girlfriend. She was also his potions apprentice before he went missing.”

  “Then I have a pretty solid guess what’s in the cave.”

  “You do?”

  He raised his eyebrows and gave me a patronizing look. “You really never do the reading assignments at school, do you?”

  I was about to retort when Nyneve raised her hands and placed them on the boulder. She took several deep breaths, closed her eyes, and concentrated. After a few seconds, the stone started to emit a pale green glow and the cave began to tremble.

  I was nervous about what was going to happen next, although Daniel seemed calm. I guess he knew something I didn’t.

  The cave shook harder as the glow increased, and the boulder began to move. It rolled to the side like an egg on a counter until the entire cave mouth was unblocked.

  From our vantage point, I couldn’t see directly inside. The moment the stone came to a rest, Nyneve took several steps back. Instinctively, I drew my wandpin.

  The hunters began to move forward, pushing Nyneve along with them. They made for the cave’s entrance and disappeared inside. Daniel and I held our positions. There was silence for about thirty seconds before the first scream. The cave shook again. More shouts followed. It sounded like the hunters were under attack. Daniel and I looked at each other. We weren’t on the hunters’ side, so we certainly weren’t about to rush in to help them face an unknown enemy.

  Suddenly, one of the magic hunters flew out of the cave with a surge of bright blue smoke. He collided against a tree. A second hunter sailed out after him and rammed into a boulder. The other hunters appeared next, driven from the cave as they fought defensively with their weapons.

  I still couldn’t see what was attacking the hunters. Frankly, I wasn’t sure they could either. There was definitely something taking shots at them. Every few seconds, I saw one of the hunter’s bodies jolt like he’d been punched. Their limbs and clothes were slashed, as if invisible blades had assaulted them. And once in a while, a blue blast of smoke would appear and blast them away. Whatever this unseen enemy was, it was tearing into the hunters with unbelievable ease.

  After a minute, all of the hunters lay unmoving on the grass. That’s when their attacker finally shimmered into existence. A golden flash appeared in the center of the battleground. Standing there when it vanished was a man about sixty years old with long white hair and a beard that hung to his waist over a silver-and-dark-blue robe.

  The man from my vision!

  He dusted off his robe and adjusted the utility belt around his waist. The belt had leather pouches hanging from it; he closed one on his left hip by snapping its latch. In his right hand was a fascinating staff. The pointy end had spiraling ridges like a mining drill. The mysterious man wiped the drill blade against the grass to get some of the blood off, then spun the staff and tapped the blunt end against the ground twice. This caused the drill blade to retract, converting the staff into a regular walking stick.

  The man turned around and spotted Nyneve at the threshold of the cave. She’d been watching the battle unfold from a safe distance. As the man walked over to her, the terror in her eyes was unmistakable.

  “Nyneve,” the man said.

  “Merlin,” she responded.

  Merlin!

  I shot a look of amazement at Daniel, but he didn’t seem surprised in the slightest.

  Nyneve clenched her fists and sighed. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it.”

  Merlin reached into one of his leather pouches and withdrew a pinch of a purple substance that looked like powder or sand. He threw it at the ground by Nyneve’s feet.

  “Ignus,” he said.

  A cloud of purple smoke enveloped Nyneve for a moment. When it dissipated, she was no longer a feeble old woman in her eighties. Now she was about forty. Her wiry, white hair had turned brown and lush. Her posture was straight and the brightness in her eyes had been restored.

  She held up her hands and gasped. “I don’t understand,” she said to Merlin. “I trapped you in that cave for years. Aren’t you angry?”

  “Anger is a waste of time, Nyneve,” Merlin said. “I have much bigger fish to fry. I simply want to look at your true face when I kill you.”

  The fear returned to Nyneve’s eyes.

  “Spiralis,” Merlin said. In an instant, the drill blade at the end of his staff reappeared. Before Nyneve could take a step back, he drove the blade straight through her. She dropped to the ground, dead. He casually wiped the drill blade on the grass again then thudded his staff twice to rescind it.

  My mouth hung open in sh
ock, but instinct kicked in as I saw one of the hunters moving in my peripheral vision. While Merlin was distracted with Nyneve, the hunter had regained consciousness and drawn an arrow from his quiver. He raised his bow.

  “Look out!” I shouted.

  Lapellius.

  My wand transformed and I leapt out from behind the boulder. The arrow shot through the air, but thankfully my warning had caused Merlin to step aside, avoiding a shot to the spine and only getting a glancing blow to the shoulder.

  Merlin stumbled forward, dropping his staff. A second hunter jumped to his feet. These guys weren’t as dead as I thought. Dagger in hand, he bolted for Merlin. This time I had a proper chance to intercept.

  I morphed my wand as I darted between Merlin and the hunter.

  Spear.

  I slammed the staff into the magic hunter’s forearm and pushed him back. With a side kick to his ribcage and a thwack to his shoulder from my staff, he went down. I kicked him in the head again for good measure before realizing that the hunter with the bow had reloaded.

  Shield.

  The arrow ricocheted off the curved metal front of my shield.

  Knife.

  I chucked my blade and it spiraled through the air, lodging directly into the hunter’s thigh. Blue would’ve been proud.

  By then Daniel had jumped into action too. As the hunter painfully pulled out my blade, my friend rushed in and roughly struck the pommel of his sword into the side of the hunter’s head, knocking him out.

  Daniel picked up my knife, wiped it on the grass, and brought it back to me. “I’m getting sick of these guys,” he said, restoring his sword to its sheath with a huff.

  “I’d imagine so,” Merlin said.

  Daniel and I turned around. Merlin had retrieved his staff. It looked like the arrow had done nothing more than nick him; only the tiniest bit of blood stained his robe and he seemed unconcerned by it. “Crisanta Knight. Daniel Daniels. Nice to finally meet you.” He nodded at each of us like he was paying respects.

  I was pretty stunned meeting the famous Merlin. Most people talked about him like he was dead. But then I was Miss Resurrection, so maybe I shouldn’t have been so susprised to see him waltz out of a cave. I was more astounded by the fact that Merlin had been the guy talking to me in my dreams. I understood that he had Pure Magic, but he’d made a choice to contact me specifically. Between that and the fact that he’d left the Questor Beast book for me to find in Gwenivere’s castle, I wondered how much of my future he had seen.