Page 49 of Wrath of the Fae

‘Yeah. In my sleep, a voice came to me and told me of the old arch on the outskirts of the Second Kingdom. It told me how to start it up. How to make it so it would end the portals. It needed some strange components, too. Bits of creatures and objects scattered about the Kingdoms. A dragon vein was one. The eye of a Gedora. Blood from a jade bat. All dark creatures. The same ones that are getting stronger.’

‘So a disembodied voice came to you, told you to gather bits of dark creatures, and put them into an arch to bring me back?’

I hear the disbelief in my words. His brow hitches as he does too.

‘Well. When you put it like that, it sounds bad.’

‘Can I hear the voice?’ I hold out my hand.

‘Of course.’ He lets me see.

I chew my lip.

‘What?’

‘That’s the same voice I’ve been hearing,’ I reply. ‘The one that told me about the shield in the cellar. Anything else I should know?’

‘Yeah. It was a strange arch.’

‘Strange how?’

‘Well, it wasn’t stone. It was a tree.’

‘A tree?’

‘Yeah. This great big, ancient tree. Hundreds of metres tall with a trunk as wide as a bus. There was a knot at the base of it, twisted into the bark. We had to weave the creature’s bits into that arch-shaped knot by chiselling grooves into the bark. Then we painted these odd markings onto it with blood. The night we finished, I found a bottle had been placed at the tree’s base.’ His eyes narrow as he recalls. ‘The bottle shimmered.’ He faces me. ‘Inside was you.’

‘Me?

‘Your gold dust.’ He looks at me, utterly perplexed. ‘Someone had left it there for me. The final ingredient. So I opened it up. This gold dust shot inside the tree, and the strange symbols we painted on glowed. The ground rumbled. We all got out of dodge before the whole thing exploded, leaving behind a crater and a very naked and confused you.’

‘That…. That’s all insane. And makes no sense.’

Another shrug.

‘I don’t care how it happened. I’m just glad it did. We needed you back and the portals to be shut down before everything was lost. Ivan and the King have taken thousands of our kind. Stolen their powers. Enslaved women. Taken children to train and brainwash them as soldiers who hold the new ideals. Our world will be a living hell if we don't stop this. Never mind the king and his bullshit vision of the future; the realms' monsters are growing. Soon, they’ll be the biggest threat. They'll consume everything. All that'll be left to save our realm from the darkness will be the king.’ He scoffs and shakes his head. ‘Our realm will become hellish, and we'll all be dead. And we can’t survive in the human realm with Ivan over there and dependent on your blood or Gilt so we don’t end up Dark and part of his army. So saving our home is the only option.’

‘Can you show me the tree and your dream?’ I flex my fingers, and he again places them on his temple.

I see it all as he described. I see the tree. I have never seen anything so large in all my life. It had to have been thousands of years old to grow such a size. I watch Wolf and his men follow Lucca’s instructions to capture and kill the beasts needed. I watch as they place them in the tree. I see Lucca paint the markings on in blood, then witness his discovery of the bottle of gold dust. When he opens it up, it soars into the tree. The markings glow over the arch-shaped knot at the tree's base.

Then I see my naked body shivering and hunched over. I see the fear and pain in my eyes.

I release him.

‘Those markings you painted onto the arch are similar to those carved on the floor beneath the cellar.’

‘I thought so too.’

‘Did you know that portals could be made from trees?’ I ask.

‘Nope.’

I walk to the window and pull aside the curtain. Below, the courtyard still bustles. Soldiers prepare. The lanterns are all lit. And many faces look up at that crack.

We need to know what it is as soon as possible.

Nothing matters more than stopping whatever Ivan is doing.

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