ADARA

"Show me it again." Tara's giggle sent a shockwave through her spine while they sat at the edge of the lake among Prunal's blooming forest.

Star-shaped leaves fell in fiery hues of autumn. Adara smiled at Tara, while her reflection beamed on the surface of the water. Lilies danced across the disturbances of the wind, spinning their tops in pollinated wonder. Fire snaked around her arms and burst into silver leashes to skitter off the edges of her fingertips. Each wisp bounced off the lilies, opening their beauty further and sent arches sprinkling across to the end of the bank. Tara stood back while Adara moved for a stray lily, small and unassuming. Water slicked through her fingers while she lifted it up and turned back to Tara.

"I think this one needs a little bit of help," she said.

Tara came closer to cup her hands underneath hers. Fire licked at the lilypads, but never scorched it into embers. It mixed with the water and slid up the petals, and Adara found herself laughing with Tara when it spread further and shimmered the air between them.

She kissed her lips across the boundary of the fire.

Adara placed it back in the water and saw it off on its journey to its fellows, dragged by the silver arcs.

"Has Rosa told you about that tree her great great grandfather planted?" Tara mused with a smile and stood at her side, where their reflections intertwined in understanding.

The tree?

Crimson tendrils crawled across the iceberg of winter willows, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose when the lilies closed, one by one. "I remember her mentioning it to me... I think she wanted us to try the fruit together."

We were going to try it...

It rested in a blood-bound basket.

"Adara!" someone screamed in the distance, Tara.

Adara whipped around when the forest crumbled into mold and ash. Branches stuck out at odd angles, twisting and groping for her. Adara stumbled back to the bank, where thick, viscous goo filled her boots and soaked her skin. Bells tolled with the setting sun, which split with a hiss and bled through the last rays of light.

"Why'd you leave me, Adara?"

Jisa's small voice shook with horror and betrayal while the stars faded into nothing behind thick, boiling clouds which chewed on the horizon and swallowed the sun. Sinew spun out of the lilies and rebuilt the bodies of those she left behind in the Prunal feast. It rang with dissonance with their heartbeats while their skeletons followed suit, stuck and matted with flayed skin, chewed to the marrow. Garren. Tara. Rosa. Everyone.

Blight. Curse. Tainted. You brought this on us.

Adara dug her nails into her palms to break skin and unleash the flames while the lake curled with viscera, the clear, silver touched water gone, while Jisa's voice demanded an answer.

"I'm sorry," she pleaded for mercy while the bubbles stilled. "I didn't mean for this to happen." A sob escaped her throat while she clawed for the embers, to burn it all to ash. Auroras flitted in the moving clouds, swallowed by massive, grinding teeth. It tore through the world with cracking bone while the center of the lake bubbled.

"But why did you leave?" Jisa said through bubbles while she tried to tear her boots out of the piles of thick liquid crimson. "You said you'd take me away from here — you left me."

"I didn't want to," Adara sobbed and dragged her fingers down her cheeks.

Half-eaten corpses snapped to her in an instant, jaws agape.

Green light flickered underneath the surface of dissonance.

Bubbles intensified as she swallowed vomit and drove her hand for the fleeting spark. It wrapped around a hilt, woven with a leather grip, where a chain tangled in her fingers. It squelched when she removed it from the muddy shallows, where teardrops of red slipped off the hook of a crescent blade. Tied around the grip, a necklace, a wyvern gripping onto the star for its life. It cracked, and green blood poured out of it to join the river.

"You left me."

Adara raised her head to the center of the blood lake.

Its back came out first with its spine showing with a sudden crack. Ice dug through her knees while she lost her breath when it crawled out of the embrace, where its mandible slicked with organic matter, slicking its tongue over its feasting ground.

"You," it whispered its vengeance while tendrils dragged it out of the water, with its serrated claws digging into the water and turning it into tar. It twisted its neck around with a wicked smile and bared its teeth. Every step never disturbed the water while it flooded the bank with its approach.

"You must run, Little Bird."

I can't.

It rang with its footsteps, larger and larger until its entire shadow bathed her.

Her fingers dug into the hilt of the crescent blade which bled a galaxy green.

Its claws tore through the water and bubbled the crimson.

Adara raised the crescent blade in front of her, but it never backed down.

At the toll of the bell, it launched. Its mandible latched onto the crescent blade, and dug into the runes along the metal. Smoke sizzled, but it huffed out the air of death and it cracked in two. Adara screamed when it tossed her with ease, and the remnants of the blade sunk beneath the surface. Into the water, she tried to find it, her last protection, while Jisa screamed.

"Fly away, Addie!"

Adara turned, and saw the emptiness of the maw.

It left her throat as she snapped off the ground, causing the other shape across from her to snap to their knees in readiness while two seaxs slipped into their hands, whispering with snow. Gray feathers tangled with white hair as they turned around to her with a scowl.

Yuven.

"I'd very much prefer not being woken up before my set time," Yuven broke the cracking of bone. "It ruins my entire schedule."

Tears slipped down her cheeks as she dragged herself to her knees, and her gaze drifted to Fenrer. At his side, his crescent blade, and the green shimmered within the runes. He rolled over with a soft sigh and opened his eyes, a question within them. "Sorry, just... bad nightmare," Adara rasped and laid back down, where crickets echoed through the luminescent forest. Hands against her stomach, she fought the urge to vomit up her rations from last night.

Moments dragged on while the Derelict taunted her from within her own mind. Hair tangled between her fingers, she resisted the urge to tug them out in hopes of grabbing the nightmare along with each strand. It fell quiet of the night crickets, and she readied herself to hear the screaming.

Yuven shuffled at his pack, taking out the golden pocket watch. "Well, since we're all awake, best to get a head start."

"Are you serious?" Adara choked the grass.

"I am deadly serious," Yuven said and headed to her. "Get up."

"Yuven..." Fenrer mumbled and tossed his arm over his brow.

Adara dragged herself past the weakness and numbness in her back to glare at Yuven, who sniffed and returned to his pack, sending a wisp of ice into the fire pit to stifle the last of her magickless embers with ease. "We'll follow the river to the steppes," he reminded them. "It's a straight route to the Hanekan cliffs, so, let's not dawdle." He snapped his fingers, where the icy ward sprinkled off the trees. "Best not to stay in one place for too long. Sooner or later Derelicts will pick up our magick."

You.

Its whisper drove her to her feet, and Fenrer followed, hooking his crescent blade back on his belt. Weakness swirled in her knees, but she hauled her personal pack along with her, wrapping herself in her shawl for warmth and comfort. I should've known from the start it was a dream. Water dug into the corners of her eyes, and she stifled the last sob. I've never had that much control of my magick... but that memory was real...

The sun crawled over the dark horizon when they reached the river's edge, where the rapids slipped against rocks and made its own journey back home, to the delta of the sea. Soreness crept through her legs at the consistent pace their leader kept them on, but when he stopped, she sank to her knees to stick her hands into the water and wash them of the nightmarish blood in grateful relief. Yuven kept a distance from her to slip his own hands into the water, where it followed his movement with careful grace, and he sliced his fingers through his feathers. He shook out his head once, then repeated the process once more.

"Are you feeling okay?" Fenrer asked.

Adara jolted at his quiet voice and turned to face him. "Yeah, just a nightmare... it probably didn't even mean anything." Back on her feet, she took a swig of her water bladder, squishing extra drops between her teeth to chase the bile into her stomach. "Sorry if I woke you up."

"You didn't." Fenrer wandered over to Yuven, who straightened himself out and sent a flick of water into Fenrer's face, who flinched.

Adara smiled at the sense of normality in a world unknown. "So..." she said when she caught up to them. "What's next for training?" Anything, to have the control I had for a moment.

"Ask Fenrer. I can't help you until you've got the basics, focus on your primordial shifting instead of bothering me," Yuven said with a point at said Warden with a huff. "I want to just focus on keeping a good time to Haneka."

Fenrer gave her an apologetic smile. "If we stop for a rest, we'll try something else."

"Such as?" Adara questioned while the river guided them on a natural path through the basin. She stepped over loose stones and roots from the trees and relished in the wind which carried the scent of lavender tangled with a sweet aroma of lilac and roses. It hung in the air and chased away the deep scent of mold and decay from the nightmare in her nose.

Fenrer pinched his lips in thought. "Last night gave me a bit of an idea that may help you," he replied. "We might need a bigger area but—"

Yuven pointed at the river. "I can always create an ice platform and let you two have at it."

"After our last training session, I don't trust you," Adara bit. "You know how long it took to dry out my clothes? How would I know that you won't just do that again?"

"Because we're traveling, and I don't want to hear you complain." Yuven folded out his list and added something to the empty lines in curved, Navei script. "Anything that slows us down, I wish to avoid." He slapped it closed and put it back into his pack, before slipping a phial of his strap to take a full swig of the contents. He stuck his tongue out and put the empty phial back in its place.

Birds flew from the trees when they passed underneath their nests with indignant chirps. Against the darkness, life goes on... Her fairytales continued in her hands and the steps she took for a new home — one where she was no longer seen as a curse, a blight on the land for something out of her control. Her thighs ached while their walk weaved near the river, never letting the rush of the rapids out of view. Voles snuffled through the undergrowth, and dug into their homes to avoid their intrusion. The windy chill kept the heat of midday off her neck and back, and she sighed when Yuven came to a stop at a marker, where the path reformed ahead, and a cobbled bridge awaited them.

Yuven stepped to the bank, and brought both hands up while he stepped onto the water. It froze with a whispered wave and dancing frost glyphs. Uncertainty swelled in her throat as he took his foot off the bank, and nodded at them. "Go, Fenrer. We must get the basics down before we reach Euros."

Fenrer nodded and walked onto the ice without another word or a hint of distrust.

I believe.

The Derelict crawled out of the muck and snarled for vengeance.

"We don't have all day, by the way," Yuven said with a nudge into her shoulder.

Adara glared, but relented in following Fenrer onto the steady, unmoving ice. Droplets from the rapids slipped past the protective sheen, but went under to avoid the hurdle. "What are you going to do?" she asked when Yuven sat against a trunk, leg folded while he set his crescent blade to his side.

"I'm going to keep an eye out for Derelicts," he replied. "Your magick is hard to ignore."

It burned into an aurora and rained brimstone and silver lava on friend and monster both.

Adara joined Fenrer on the largest patch of ice, unmoving against the river's current. Beneath, the glyph of frost held it in place, and she shuddered when Yuven called, "By the way, if Derelicts attack, I will have to let go of ice."

Ass.

"What do you want me to do?" Adara asked as Fenrer glanced at Yuven, then returned his attention to her. "Throw a fireball? Melt this ice we're standing on?" She punched the air and longed to feel the lash of fire to follow it, but it never formed into a glyph.

"Throwing a fireball would work."

Adara dropped her fists. "I wasn't serious."

Fenrer smiled at her. "If you're concerned, don't be. I don't know if Yuven mentioned this, but I have a certain quality to my magick. You'll see what I mean," he said and stepped an inch farther from her, then held out his arms. "Use the spark, and unleash it. Have no fear. The first step is often the hardest, but I think I can help you, at least with Primordial Shifting. Don't worry about glyphs — Yuven will teach you that when we get through this."

"If you say so..." Adara loosened out her muscles and shook out her hands. "I just don't want to hurt you."

I don't want to hurt anybody.

Understanding flashed in his gaze, but he nodded. "You won't, and even if you do, we'll try again until it is second nature and you have no need to fear hurting someone else with your magick." He took another step back, relaxed and with no indication of planning to strike back.

Show me it again.

Adara flattened her soles against the ice and glanced at Yuven, who rested his head against the trunk and glanced upwards to the sun in the sky. Moonlilies bloomed in her palm, carried on the silver stars, aflame with hope. It warmed her blood, and seared closer to her skin as she tried to keep it contained. It sizzled and embers sparked on her palms. It grew, chewing on the air while shadows fluttered underneath her. Fenrer tensed with an assuring smile. It tangled around her feet, and lifted with the silver smoke.

It cracked with blood.

I can't...

Adara drew into herself, but the energy ripped through the world, setting alight in the crackles of embers. Patches of the ice melted, and her breath caught in her chest when she tried to push it out of her, in all directions. It swelled, but she frowned when green burrs tangled the aurora, and she stepped back when a glyph expanded from underneath her, where the flames rustled into drops of rain. Yuven lifted a glyph over his head to catch the sweeping rainfall, not giving them a second glance.

Her hand caught a raindrop, cold, born from fire.

Adara lifted her head when Fenrer brought the glyph closer, then released a heavy breath as it dissipated into the moss greens. "I was ready for it this time," he said.

"You couldn't have aimed that somewhere else?" Yuven complained from the edge.

Adara held the last drop closer to her heart, where light glimmered within the spark.

"It is still your magick," Fenrer said. "Try creating a magelight."

Adara nodded and shielded the rain, and a bird flew from the cage, breaking free from the prison of teeth. It warmed against her skin, but a cold touch of water slicked across her fingertips as she opened it. It bloomed into a swirling mist, shielded with a bubble of flames. It barely lit the shadows underneath them, but Fenrer beamed at her.

"Good job," he said with a bow.

Adara sniffed and held the magelight closer. "You deserve most of the credit for that."

Fenrer raised his hands with a sheepish smile. "No, Adara, you misunderstand. My bloodline magick simply reflects what I take in. It stockpiles, but at its core, it cannot change the magick it is holding," he said. "Yes, I guided it, but a lot of it was you." He lowered his hands. "I think you just need time, Adara," he said and motioned at the magelight. "We'll keep working on it, but does it still burn?"

"No," Adara whispered her realization.

Fenrer tipped his head with a smile, and headed off the ice patch after he had brought the dream to life, the dancing silver arcs and the blooming moonlilies.

The magelight whisked off her fingertips in chilly mist, and the raindrop slipped off onto the ice.

Is that what's inside me? Is that what you see? Her tears collected, but she brushed them off her cheeks and rejoined them on the shore.

Is that what you believe in?

Adara gazed at Fenrer as he matched Yuven's pace.

Is that what guided you two to me?