“The goddess’ greatest gift to her children was life everlasting, for with her sacrifice, Mordreth’s hunger was finally sated. May her light continue to shine through us all and guide us into the future she has secured.”
– Argus Phaedlich, High Magister of Her Grace’s Order of Radiance
The Angaeli Forest
Orenthium, Former Ilythia
219 Years Post Surgence
Liv woke to an agony she’d never known.
Fire lanced through her right palm and up the length of her arm as if the bone within had turned molten. She gasped, unable to stop the tears nor the scream that followed. She clutched it close to her chest, curling further into the fetal position she found herself in.
Was it broken? Burned? One way or another, she had to find out. She forced herself to take a breath through the blinding pain. In through her nose, out through her mouth. In, then out.
At first, her lungs refused to obey. They, like the rest of her body, had seized up the moment she’d regained consciousness. Her stubborn will bullied them into submission regardless and as her breaths gradually began to level out, so too did the pain. Her senses returned one by one, body relaxing as the minutes crawled by. Eventually, the ache lessened to a manageable throb and she managed to sit up.
Where the hell was she?
Make-up smeared as she rubbed at her eyes, but she didn’t care. Grass tickled her bare legs and a few feet away, her heels rested within a patch of ferns and tiny blue wildflowers. Birds sang from hidden hollows and somewhere close by, she could hear the steady burble of a stream. She was in a forest, that much was clear, but how she had gotten there was another matter entirely.
There were no recognizable roads nearby as far as she could tell, nor was there a trail of any kind. Had she been dumped here? Her insides turned watery at the thought and she quickly glanced herself over. She was still in her silver cocktail dress, which aside from a bit of mud and the errant grass stain, was still intact. No blood, no bruising, no soreness, aside from her arm. She was still in possession of all her internal organs and so far as she could tell, she hadn’t been assaulted. All things considered, things could be considerably worse.
Had she been drugged? If so, why? She saw no signs of anyone else having been nearby, but that didn’t mean she was alone or that her abductor wouldn’t return. What had that man from the garden said? The items being sold were of particular interest? Had he meant herself and the other girls? Shit, what if she was in some sort of death game?
She paused, suddenly remembering the rest of the night in its entirety. The last thing she recalled was reaching for that odd crystal. Everything had gone black after that. Had she triggered some sort of security measure when she’d touched it? She supposed it was possible. That strange light she’d seen could have been a sensor, right? And the ripple of energy could have been one of those lesser known crowd control methods used to make people sick. Maybe she’d had a bad reaction to it? It didn’t explain why she’d been dumped here, but maybe whoever had found her thought she was dead and panicked?
If that was the case, how far had they driven to dispose of her?
Her arm spasmed and she hissed. The bastards must have tossed her out like yesterday’s garbage. If her arm had been broken, it wasn’t going to make getting out of here any easier. She knew basic first aid and CPR, but there was only so much she could do for a broken bone. She’d just have to improvise and hope for the best.
Once she actually inspected the damned thing. In truth, she’d been afraid to look at it for fear of what she might find. She took a deep breath and slowly eased her arm away from her chest in order to inspect it properly.
Her breath hitched.
In a panic, she tried to scrub what she was seeing from her skin. It wasn’t possible. She was hallucinating. She’d been drugged. It was the only logical explanation she could think of to explain the absolute absurdity of her situation.
But nothing happened.
The marks were still there on her skin, mocking her.
“No,” she breathed, trying again to no avail, “No, no, no. Fuck.”
The same runic script she’d seen upon the stone had been tattooed along the inside of her right arm from palm to elbow in neat, orderly columns. Soft, aureate light rippled along the foreign characters, bringing about a new set of throbbing heat. Her olive skin was raised and pink along the edges of the ink, though the faintest line of black was also present like the skin had been burned.
Hesitantly, she tested her fingers, wiggling each one several times to ensure they all still worked. Thankfully, the pain didn’t intensify, so she assessed her wrist, then her elbow and finally, her shoulder. Despite the ache and the presence of the strange markings, everything felt and appeared functional. There was no bruising, no redness and mercifully, no swelling.
Wiping the tears from her eyes with her good hand, she glanced over her immediate surroundings. Aside from her shoes and the stupid fox mask that had been knocked from her face, there was nothing. No stone. No tire tracks. Nothing.
“Come on, give me something,” she muttered under her breath.
The moment the words escaped her lips, something tugged at her heart. It was faint, like the brush of a cobweb, but distinct. She stiffened. That hadn’t been a heart palpitation, had it?
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The soft, amber glow emanating from within her chest told her it wasn’t.
A matching sphere manifested itself within arm’s reach, appearing as nothing more than a loose collection of swirling light. It was no larger than a basketball and hovered a foot or so from the ground. It grew bright, but quickly began to fade and as it did, it revealed an open book at its center. Golden dust twinkled along the materializing pages and gradually drifted off into nothingness.
Liv could only stare in dumbfounded fascination at the leather bound tome hanging in the air before her. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be, yet the impossibility stared her in the face all the same. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. If this was all some sort of dream, maybe her mind would realize it and wake up.
When she opened her eyes, the book was still there.
“You can’t be serious.”
The book patiently floated where it had appeared.
She tried looking away, then back again, but nothing changed, so she closed her eyes again. Her mind was playing tricks on her, she told herself. The book wasn’t real. She was dreaming or hallucinating. Hell, for all she knew, she’d hit her head and fallen into a coma.
The book didn’t disappear.
This time, it gave an almost exasperated flick of one of its open pages.
“An imaginary book with an attitude. Great.”
The edges of the pages ruffled like the feathers of some disgruntled bird and she scowled at it.
“When I asked for something, this isn’t exactly what I meant.”
The book didn’t seem to care.
Her lips thinned as she debated whether or not to humor it. Crazy as she felt, she supposed it couldn’t hurt. Maybe it was her subconscious trying to reach out, to offer her a clue. Or maybe it really was some magical book.
She reached a careful hand toward it and plucked it from the air as easily as she would have from a shelf. The leather binding was warm and supple beneath her fingers, the pages within thicker and a touch more coarse than what she was used to. They almost reminded her of some old-timey journal. They were blank too, which only served to confuse her.
Then, in a neat, flowing script, two words faded into being at the center of the left page: Hello Olivia.
The ink almost appeared to be burned into the page. Her first inclination was to chuck the book into the forest, but she held her nerve. It was spooky as shit, but it hadn’t hurt her. Not the way those damned tattoos had.
She bit her lip, but decided to play along, “Hi. I, uh . . .”
How in the hell was she supposed to carry on a conversation with a book?
“Can you tell me where I am?”
The prior words vanished and a new sentence arose: You are in the Angaeli forest of Orenthium.
“And where is that, exactly?”
Orenthium.
That wasn’t the least bit helpful.
“Is Orenthium a country?”
Yes.
Alright, that was some progress, at least. Not that she had the faintest idea where this mysterious country was. She almost felt like she’d fallen through a hole in reality.
You have, in a sense.
Liv snorted, “Are you telling me I somehow clipped into the backrooms?”
No.
Her eyes narrowed.
“What are you, exactly?”
A spiritbook. Your spiritbook.
“I have no idea what that is.”
Shall I show you?
She hesitated and glanced over her shoulder as if she half expected someone to jump out and find her talking to some dusty old book.
“Fine. Show me.”
The text faded.
Then, the open pages began to fill. Illustrations and flowing, flowery script rippled across them as if burned into the parchment by some invisible, artful hand. The entirety of the left page depicted a great tree contained within a sun-like circle. Its branches and roots wove around the halo in intricate, twining patterns that almost reminded Liv of the tree of life. The complexity of it was dizzying to the eye, for the longer she gazed upon it, the more details arose: a hidden sapling whose roots found nothing but air, a city skyline that was both familiar and foreign, a tear among a tapestry of stars.
She blinked before it could suck her in entirely and focused on the text along the right page instead.
Olivia Lockhard
Age: Twenty-four
Origin: Unknown
Place of Birth: Unknown
Living relatives: Two detected
Gemcore: Animite
Designation: Type III
Order: First
Aspect Alignment: None
Access to Arcane Spring: None.
The settling of your gemcore has granted you access to the cultivation tree. Four selections await your attention.
Aside from her name and age, none of what she read made any sense. Gemcore? Arcane spring? Was she supposed to be some sort of witch? Her lips thinned as she read further.
Afflictions: Forsaken.
In death, life blooms anew, but not for you.
“That’s not ominous at all,” she muttered.
She flipped to the next page and froze. The top of the heading read: Bound Artifacts, but it wasn’t what had caught her attention. It was the illustration. Much like the tree of life, a perfect rendition of the strange crystal was burned into the page, complete with the glyph-like script now marking her arm.
Artifact: Spiritshard
Alignment: Authority
Class: Divine
Discovered Abilities:
- Dimensional Travel
- Unknown
- Unknown
She glanced at the inside of her arm, but then a low rumble drew her attention to the sky. The massive craft gliding above the trees was not a plane, but a blimp. Its silver balloon glinted as it passed overhead, casting her world in momentary shadow.
With shaking fingers, Olivia closed the book as the rumble of its engine reverberated through the ground and into her bones. She wasn’t in a coma at all, was she? This was real.
Realization swept through her in an icy breeze. The private invitations, the NDAs, the man from the garden’s cryptic words– The items being auctioned off at the Braddock estate were not trinkets or people, but dangerous artifacts.
And she had stolen one.