Page 59 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

Panic unfurled in her core. She tried to feel the pulsing of her mana, tried to pull her stones close to her for protection, but her control kept slipping. She felt like a fallen leaf caught in an unrelenting storm, crashing and thrashing whichever way the wind desired. With no will of her own. No control over her situation.

Tears budded in the corner of her eyes and she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Kolfinna!” That sounded like Gunnar.

When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling in front of her, a horrified expression on his face. He turned to the others, who were still in the midst of their own battles. “She’s down! We need to get her and Inkeri out of here!”

“We can’t leave Blár!” Eluf crushed a bird’s skull in one hand and slammed the corpse into another bird.

“But—” Gunnar looked over his shoulder and gritted his teeth together.

Kolfinna tried to open her mouth to say something, to ask if Blár was all right, but her body still didn’t listen. It reminded her too much of when she wielded theDød Sværdand had no control over herself. She wasn’t sure if it was the venom that was making her sick to her stomach or the memories of the sword.

She closed her eyes again and calmed her breathing. It was only a matter of time before her body healed itself and shewould be able to join them all in battle once more. She needed to remain calm and focus on moving her fingers. The slightest twitch of movement would tell her when the venom’s grasp on her was loosening.

Time seemed to be moving excruciatingly slow. Ice crackled. Light flared. Fire roared, and water crashed and slammed into trees, monsters, and the ground alike. Kolfinna could hear the ragged breaths of her teammates. Could smell the acidic scent of monster blood, of burning flesh, of sweat and human blood.

She pulled at her mana and latched onto the closest thing to her—a tree. Instead of her mana disappearing from her, it wavered and wobbled but remained in her control. She had never been successful at manipulating a dormant tree before, even though she had tried several times, but for whatever reason, she felt like she had to try again. Right now.

Manipulating nature had always been Kolfinna’s strongest ability. Stone magic didn’t come close to how gifted she was with nature. But it still surprised her when she grasped onto the tiny thread of dormant life inside the tree and held it in place. Instead of slipping through her fingers, it remained. It was probably due to her training, or maybe because she was hyper focused on it, but when she pulled on the lifeforce of the tree, it gave in to her demands.

It worked.

She could feel the swaying of the branches, how deep the roots were in the ground, the thickness of the trunk. She opened her eyes and willed one of the roots to stretch out and lash at the ever-growing number of snakes. The root unearthed itself like a violet, sharpened whip. Herja and Gunnar yelped in surprise as the root skewered a nearby snake, and then another, and then another.

Kolfinna made the branches of the tree grow longer and lash the birds in the sky. Her fingers twitched and that was all sheneeded to try and push herself up. Her weakened body lacked the strength to hold her own weight. Willing a pair of roots out from underground, she wrapped them around her body and pulled herself up. Slowly, she rose to her feet, the roots clinging to her arms and legs. Her vision dotted with shadows and she had to blink several times to clear it.

She could already feel the venom fading from her body, but she doubted the same could be said about Inkeri. She could see through the swirling water enough to see her face was as pale as snow and the tears in her pants revealed purple skin.

Kolfinna stumbled forward. Blár and the elf woman were still fighting in her peripheral. The woman slammed her staff onto Blár’s ice spear and shattered it. A host of shadows erupted from her hand, but Blár shoved her with a wall of ice and sent her flying through a thicket of trees. Kolfinna shifted her attention to Inkeri, to the skeletal birds picking at everyone’s flesh, to the snakes snapping to bury their fangs into them.

Ivar’s water didn’t attack Kolfinna as she dropped down in front of him and Inkeri. He held her tightly, his blue-green eyes wide and his hands trembling. She had never thought he was capable of wearing such a vulnerable expression.

Kolfinna placed a hand on Inkeri’s sweaty forehead. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to have lost consciousness a while ago.

“Is she going to die?” Ivar’s voice was barely a whisper. A bird tried to come toward them, but water sliced it in half. And yet, Ivar hadn’t taken his eyes off Inkeri. “You’re moving around, but why isn’t she?—”

“I’m different.” She didn’t need to tell him that she was possibly part elf, or that she had strange healing magic.

“Maybe”—Ivar placed a hand on Inkeri’s thigh—“if we cut off her leg, the venom won’t spread?—”

Bile rose up her throat and she pushed it down. “Let me try healing her.”

“Healing?” His hands tightened on Inkeri’s shoulders. “Can you save her?”

“Maybe.” Kolfinna had only seen rune magic heal one time in her life, and that was when Revna had healed her leg. She had no knowledge of it, but maybe she could figure it out. She had gotten better at runes, after all. Maybe … Maybe she could do this.

Kolfinna pressed a hand on Inkeri’s calf. Her mind drew a blank on what runes to use. Heal? That was too basic and broad. Runes needed to be very specific in order to work properly. Maybe she could tell the runes to get rid of the venom? But then, how would the runes know what the venom was or wasn’t? What if it attacked her whole body?

“How long have we been fighting?” Kolfinna asked. “How long since she was bitten?”

Ivar blinked. “Maybe … twenty minutes?”

“Okay.” Kolfinna’s mana spread to her fingertips.

Remove any toxins that entered her body these past thirty minutes.

The magic resisted and even after pouring her mana into them, they didn’t appear. Kolfinna cursed softly and tried again. She pushed more and more mana into the words, willing them to show up on Inkeri’s body, but they didn’t.

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