Despite her earlier ranting, fear rocked her to the core.
Her knees had hit the boggy ground hard when she had been hauled from the tunnel, and now they wobbled as she tried to stand on the soggy earth.
“Now, now niece-mine,” Silver cooed mercilessly, and Asha cringed at the undertones of anger in her aunt’s well practiced calm voice. “It’s not polite to run from a wytch’s duel.”
Those two words filled Asha with dread. Wytches duels were deadly; denying one in front of witnesses was considered warrant for an instant execution. The only way out of one was declaring submission. If Asha did that now after all of the wytch queens had undoubtedly been listening to her rant, the shame and disgrace would lose her all the hard earned respect she had been working towards over the last few months.
She had no choice but to accept Silver’s challenge, no way to win without help and no way to surrender without succumbing to injury.
“The terms?” She asked, her voice strong despite her unfair odds.
“Magic and swords only and no outside assistance is to be given.” Silver specified. “Submission is to be assumed if either party loses consciousness for longer than a minute.” Silver’s gaze was a hard glare as she spat out a set of fairly standard rules.
Now all that was left was Asha’s acceptance.
*
Asha looked terrified, and it was just as well she should. Silver had no intention of taking it easy on her niece; she couldn’t, even had she wanted to.
Though Asha’s words had been primarily spoken out of childish arrogance rather than true rebellion, they could not be taken back now that the other wytches had heard them. Silver had winced when Keenan had relayed what he was hearing, but the other dark wytch queens had heard the same from their spies, and now they wanted to see Silver do something about it. It was up to her to prove that even Asha was not above Dark Coven law.
The problem was that she had sworn an oath never to harm Asha. Silver could not lose the battle for fear of losing the wytches’ respect, nor could she harm Asha.
Of course, her anger supplied, this wouldn’t even be necessary if Asha would just do as she was told and have conversations mind to mind where they couldn’t be overheard.
“I accept.” Asha’s mismatched eyes met hers and it was clear that her niece in equal parts hated and feared her from that single glance. Oh well, it wasn’t as if Silver really cared about what Asha thought of her, was it?
Silver knew her main challenge would be not to go too far. To inflict just enough damage to force Asha’s submission but not to kill. Then there was the fact that to put Asha properly in her place the defeat would have to be quick enough to be humiliating.
Asha went for the kills from the start, almost instantly Silver felt her life force being drained. She blocked the attack with a shield of power she had been working on in her spare time to be used as part of Asha’s training.
While such a shield was useful, Silver quickly noted the amount of power it drained. Drawing power from her permanent portals in Dalmorin to compensate, she allowed Asha one more attempt to drain her before smirking and conjuring her pyro-demon fire whip. It crackled at it soared towards Asha’s neck.
Asha barely dodged and stumbled when she should have rolled to avoid the second crack of the whip. A third crack of the whip sent her niece flying sideways to avoid it landing flat on her back on the grass.
Silver didn’t even bother unsheathing her swords as she moved closer to where Asha knelt, covered in mud. She snapped her whip and watched Asha go deadly still as the lethal fire coiled itself around her throat.
One move and Asha was dead.
“You’re dead.” Silver stated quietly, “Do you submit?” She tightened the fiery noose.
Asha glared back in defiance. The entire ordeal had taken less than a minute and Silver could guess how humiliated her niece was. The longer Asha took to answer the hotter and brighter Silver made the noose until the heat caused beads of sweat to form along Asha’s skin.
“I submit.” Her niece whispered.
Most people would have removed the whip at that point, and offered their hand to help up their opponents. Silver offered merely a cold smile.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear you.”
“I SUBMIT.” Asha half growled, half screamed, with murder in her eyes.
Silver bent closer, dismissing the whip and grabbing her niece’s chin to force her to look at her.
“The next time you do something like this, the next toe you put out of line, I will send you straight back to your darling mother, Ancients’ will be damned.”
Asha angrily wrenched her chin away from her grasp, and without waiting for any further tantrum-like behaviour Silver turned and strode away into the forest, Keenan hot on her heels.
“That.” He began, once they were out of earshot, “was unnecessary.”
“No, it was cruel, but it was very necessary.” Silver corrected. “If you’re looking to find regret for my actions, you won’t find it.” On the contrary, Silver was quite pleased with how well she had managed to fulfil both her vow to Romana and keep the Dark Coven happy.
“You humiliated her.” Keenan argued. “Asha won’t forget this easily. I thought the entire point of her staying here was so that she could look strong, how did defeating her in less than a minute gain her the respect of her peers?”
“Yes, Asha has to look strong.” Silver agreed. “But not at the expense of my looking weak.
The summons from Gaillean was a welcome relief from Keenan’s inquisition, and she took off, leaving him behind in a single powerful wingbeat.
*
From her spot, laying face up in the muddy bog, Asha saw the blur that was her aunt taking to the sky like a black swan. Everyone, even Masozi, had left her after the duel, leaving her to live or die as fate willed. Those were the rules, but Asha was barely wounded, if you didn’t count her pride. The humiliation and sadness set in quickly to blunt the edge of her rage. Though logically, she knew this entire situation had been her fault, it did little to ease the knowledge that Aunt Silver hadn’t even tried to get her off the hook, preferring instead to disgrace her in front of the women she would one day have to lead with.
Silver had to have known that she didn’t really mean any of those things! She’d just been boasting to try and get over failing another of Silver’s surprise attack. It wasn’t as if she’d planned for the other wytches to be listening!
As Asha stood her pride stung along with her bruises and aching limbs. She tried to unmerge her wings from her back, but reconsidered after remembering Silver’s presence in the skies. Sighing she looked westwards towards the mountain range that housed Dalmorin and the Dark Temple. She should probably go to training in the Dark Temple, but her pride had her turning southwest towards the dwarven fortress that was home.
It was going to be a long walk.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DEADLY CASCADE
It wasn’t until she was halfway home that Asha saw the first dragon soar overhead. The sight wasn’t unusual in the summer, due to their annual migration between the mountains of the east and the lands across the Great Sea. It wasn’t until Asha heard the first roar that she realised there was only one week until she returned to her mother and the Light Coven. The revelation brought her to a halt where she stood on the craggy mountainside trail, and she thought of home and the Isle of the Gifted and all of the things she’d given up to come here.
But did she really fit with the light wytches anymore? She leant against the cliff face that formed one side of the pathway and watched the dragons go past. Her side ached where she had fallen on it in the fight and as she waited more injuries made themselves known.
Slumping until she sat on a piece of rock that jutted out from the floor, Asha groaned. Realistically speaking it was no worse than her training injuries but the thought of having to go to the Dark Temple tomorrow and face the others made her feel physically ill. She was so focus
ed on her thoughts that she missed the small trickle of dirt falling from the cliff above her. It took her a few moments to realise that the thundering sound she was hearing was not in fact simply another dragon’s roar, but rather the sliding of rocks down the mountainside.
A quick glance showed her that those rocks that were in fact as big as horses and headed straight towards her.
She stood frozen for precious seconds, should she try to run out of the way or fly above it? Fear froze her, but somehow her wings acted without her conscious command, unmerging at a speed she’d never thought possible and then, in a feat of strength she’d never managed before, executing one of Silver’s famous vertical take-offs as if she had done it a thousand times.
Below her tons of rock from the mountainside slid downwards like water, coming to halt only moments after the deadly cascade had started.
Grandma Kate’s presence in her mind was gone before Asha fully recognised who had saved her. She sent her grandmother a mental embrace along the bond they shared before her wings gave out.
She fell from the sky, thanking her good graces her grandmother hadn’t taken her too high up when she stood again, winded but otherwise fine.
It appeared her beautiful wings had been unprepared for the manoeuvres Kate had forced upon them, however, and as she remerged them with her back Asha felt the tendons screaming in protest. She winced at the knowledge that she may have snapped a few fine bones or tendons. Resetting that would be painful.
All of her scrapes were forgotten however, as she caught sight of glittering amongst the dust engulfed rubble. Raising her cloak to her mouth to make it easier to breathe, Asha carefully picked her way towards the glittering, her curiosity undimmed despite the circumstances.
It was an egg.
Made of a metallic material that had been etched finely with a maze-like pattern, the egg was slightly bigger than her hand, and heavy. Likely some trinket of the nobility that had been stolen and stashed further up the mountain by bandits, Asha thought. The rockslide must have carried it down. Although how it was completely undented by such travels was beyond her.
She thought about leaving it, guilt about taking what wasn’t hers warring within her.
“It’s not as if I’m stealing it.” She muttered to herself, stowing the egg safely in her satchel with a last guilty look at the surroundings before hurrying away in case the mountain destabilised again.
“Lady Asha!” Lena looked almost faint with relief as she trudged inside some hours later. “Thank goodness you’re alright, little mistress!”
Asha nodded tiredly, allowing herself to be pulled into a fierce hug.
“Mistress, you’re shaking!” Lena exclaimed, leading her over to an armchair in the living room. “What happened to you?”
Asha realised nobody else was back yet. Masozi was still in training, Keenan and Silver obviously hadn’t returned either.
She took a deep breath and told Lena everything. The brownie was quiet throughout; her only responses were small nods, or furrows appearing fleetingly upon her brow. When Asha finished her tale, Lena only had one question for her.
“Where is the egg now?”
Asha hesitated, unwilling to part with her prize, but shook herself and carefully removed the egg from her satchel, passing it over to Lena.
“What have you found?” Lena muttered almost to herself, setting the egg gently down onto the table as she rushed to a bookshelf near the fireplace.
Asha snatched the egg back up as soon as Lena let go of it, but the brownie didn’t seem to notice as she quickly skimmed through the pages of book after book, leaving each one open across the top of the sofa as if cross referencing them. Asha breathed an inward sigh of relief that Lena had chosen to focus on the egg, rather than the degrading duel against Aunt Silver.
“Not dragon eggs… no definitely not… basilisk maybe? ... I doubt it!” Lena’s hushed musings carried softly as Asha settled back into the chair, admiring the way firelight glimmered in the surface of the egg.
“It survived a rockslide, you say?” Lena asked, and Asha nodded.
“Well that rules out wyverns.” Lena huffed.
The brownie searched her books for several more minutes before picking one up and presenting the open page to Asha.
On the parchment an exquisitely detailed drawing of her egg was shown surrounded by labelled descriptions in the scholar’s untidy hand.
“What is it?” She asked the elderly brownie.
“It’s a gryphon egg.” Lena said. “Except that Master Scholar Lucius has been dead five hundred years, and the egg he studied never hatched. Gryphons have been considered extinct since then. It all fits though, virtually indestructible, and kept in nests hidden well in the snowy peaks of mountains.”
Asha stood. “It’s mine.” She stated.
“My lady, the likelihood of it ever hatching is slim to none.” Lena informed her. “In all likelihood it is just a faded remnant of another species hunted to extinction by the dwarves.”
“I don’t care.” Asha replied. “I found it, I own so few things, surely Aunt Silver won’t object?”
“I can’t see it becoming a problem, but your mother likely would forbid it if you plan on trying to hatch it.”
“I could do it.” Asha objected. “I’d just need to take the life from a plant or something and channel it into the egg.”
“I doubt that would be wise.” Lena cautioned. “When they were still alive gryphons were documented to be unruly, proud and unpredictable creatures. What good would it do to bring back one single gryphon, only to tell it that it is the last of its kind?”
“I want to try.”
“But, little mistress, surely it would be kinder not to.”
Asha wasn’t listening; the more she thought about it, the more the idea took root until it was almost a compulsion beating at her.
“I have to do this,” She said, cutting off the brownie’s speech as she ran out of the fortress towards the forest.
“Asha!” Lena called frantically after her.
Soon, however, she was deep in the forest, in search of a suitable tree.
When she found one, a great old pine taller than most she had ever seen, she placed the egg at its base, before placing a hand on each one.
Her power leapt to her command, pulling the life force from the great pine, and Asha felt the rush as she acted as a conduit, moving that power from the tree into the egg which glowed beneath her touch.
It wasn’t enough, soon the pine lay dead before her, its needles decayed and black, so Asha sent her consciousness further, looking for something else, anything that might have the life force required to reawaken the dormant egg. The grass around her began to die, and soon she stopped caring what she took power from. Anything and everything around her, she didn’t care.
It wasn’t until she felt the egg pulse with life beneath her that she stopped.
There was a moment of quiet, the shock of so much death muting the sounds of the forest.
Then the consequences of what she’d done came crashing down on her in the form of a dragon, which had hurtled into earth in front of her; emaciated from its very life force being stolen. Trees, now little more than dead logs had speared through its wings on the way down and around her for yards in every direction every living thing had died.
What had she done now?
“Was it worth it?” Lena asked, emerging from the treeline. “Bringing back a creature so old took so much life from this world, was it worth it?”
Asha nodded slowly, the pulsing of life within the egg her main focus.
“And this, the problems this will cause for your mother and her familiars when they discover whose fault it was that a dragon crashed and died. And the problem from your aunt if they come looking for answers at Dalmorin, which is a bare half a league away?”
“Lena, this, it’s my familiar.” Asha knew it within her very soul, “And he’s about to hatch.”
“Then bring him ins
ide, little mistress.” The brownie muttered sadly, “I’ll make sure you’re undisturbed for your bonding.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ON GOOD TERMS
The next morning, the shell of the egg shattered. Shards of metallic silver flew across Asha’s bed, though Asha managed to avoid being hit by any. The mess didn’t concern her, not when the small soggy ball of fur, feathers and scales kicked away the last pieces of its egg and wobbled into the world.
Barely as large as a lion cub Asha gathered the fragile baby into her arms, still recovering from the sledgehammer blow that had been their bond falling into place. She carried her precious burden towards the bath of water that Lena had drawn up and used a warm cloth to wipe away the stickiness attached to her familiar.
“Hush,” Asha cooed, looking him over.
Like the diagrams in the books she’d been reading while she awaited the hatching, he had the body, tail, mane and hind legs of a lion, yet the wings and head of an eaglet. As her familiar was just a baby, its wings were tiny, barely formed and covered in tiny downy feathers.
He wasn’t exactly pretty, yet his appearance screamed a potential for magnificence that Asha was certain he would grow into with age.
He didn’t speak, merely looked at her with large, green, trusting eyes as she dried him carefully.
Lena had left some small strips of raw fish in a bowl on the side and Asha swallowed her distaste as she offered some to the gryphon, who gulped the strips down whole.
Asha decided quickly what she would call him; Keir settled down quickly in her arms when she sat cross-legged with him in her arms by the fire so his fur could dry. In the hallway she heard Silver enter the caves, ranting loudly about rash decisions before Lena’s quiet voice interceded. When Asha chose to leave her room, she was going to get an earful from her aunt, but since she would be leaving for the Isle of the Gifted soon she knew she would have to at least try to part on good terms with Silver.
Asha's Power (Soul Merge Saga Book 4) Page 19