As they crept deeper into the forest, the trees became more sickly. Their barks had turned a stark white and had begun to crack and fall off in places, while the air was thick with the sickly sweet stench of the rotting pale white leaves that were piled up on the floor.

  “How did you miss this at your doorstep?” Brynn wondered out loud.

  “No one comes this way anymore,” Kara protested defensively. “Besides, our people are spread too thin…”

  Eskar clicked his tongue irritably, and Kara fell silent.

  “Those are just excuses,” he said sharply. “That this corruption could occur so close to the capital unnoticed is a failing of the Rangers that shall live on in infamy.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much,” Abner offered. “This corruption doesn’t look that advanced.”

  “It is a few days old,” Stride said.

  Gen looked shocked. “Does the decay happen that quickly?”

  Stride nodded absently. “My father and I were in the forest every day, even before the corruption arrived. He made extensive notes of its progress.”

  “I would very much like to speak with him, then,” Eskar remarked.

  Stride gave Abner an icy look before growling. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. He’s dead.”

  Kara covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, you poor thing…”

  Stride scowled and quickened his pace while the others looked around nervously. Eskar eventually lengthened his gait and caught up with the boy.

  “Don’t be rash,” he warned. “There could be hidden dangers.”

  “Anything living thing that could leave already has by now,” Stride retorted.

  A deep, guttural roar stopped Stride and the others in their tracks. Abner saw movement in the corner of his eye and turned in time to see the earth bulge, as though something huge was pushing up through it. Trees around it toppled as the bulge grew, revealing that it was part of an enormous head. Abner watched, stunned, as the mud golem rose from the ring of fallen trees. The mud golem was even larger than the last one they encountered, standing almost as tall as the silver barked trees around it. Then, the creature raised a massive arm.

  “Down!” Abner roared.

  Brynn tackled Gen to the ground while Abner did the same to Stride. The elves, meanwhile, leapt into the trees in a single bound and as the massive mud arm scythed through the air, snapping fully grown trees like twigs before slicing the air inches over Abner’s head.

  “Gen, ice!” Abner roared as he scrambled to his feet, dragging Stride with him to avoid a massive foot the creature brought down on where they had been lying.

  The ground shuddered as the creature’s foot crashed into it, knocking Abner off balance. Dirt filled his mouth as he fell face first into the freshly churned earth. He whirled around to see that the creature had been distracted by the hail of arrows Eskar was firing at it from a nearby tree. As it plodded towards the elf Captain, Abner shouted again.

  “Ice, Gen!”

  “I can’t!” she called back. “There is no water! I’ll use fire!”

  “No, wait!” Abner cried as he scrambled to his feet.

  “Flamethrower!” Gen roared.

  She formed a circle with her finger and her thumb and placed it in front of her mouth before blowing through it. Flames erupted from the circle and licked the creature’s foot, and ignited the leaves of the trees behind it, but did no visible harm to the creature itself. Brynn rushed to pull Gen away as the creature drew a leg back and unleashed a swift kick. Abner could only watch helplessly, knowing it was too late for them. However, the creature’s foot stopped inches from Gen’s face.

  Abner looked up in disbelief. The mud golem was completely silent. The elves, too, watched stunned from their vantage point above the ground. Meanwhile, the flames caused by Gen’s spell froze in place, making the forest look like a surreal painting.

  “Genevieve,” a male voice. It was disembodied, and impossible for Abner to determine where it had come from. “So, they sent you.”

  “There,” Stride whispered.

  Abner looked where the boy was pointing and saw a slender man who looked to be in his thirties. His brown hair was shaggy and unkempt, and he sported an untidy beard and wore dishevelled pale blue robes.

  “Gen, so they sent you after all.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud. However, Abner’s attention was drawn to the twisted, pulsating sack of black flesh tucked under his arm. It was just like the one the High Priestess had been holding.

  “Brother,” Gen gasped. “So you were behind this.”

  Beside her, Brynn wasted no time throwing a cloak around her shoulders that seemed to shimmer in every hue of the rainbow. She sprang up the side of the mud golem, using the crags and cracks in its skin as footholds. The young man raised a hand towards Brynn, and a spike of ice the length of Abner’s forearm formed out of thin air.

  “Brother, no!” Gen cried. “Everyone, stop, please! Let us talk things over!”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Her words were of no avail. The spike rocketed towards Brynn, who raised her cloak without slowing down. The garment’s shifting colours turned a deep shade of blue as the spike struck it and shattered into shards of ice. Meanwhile, Eskar and Stride fired their arrows at the man, which seemed to strike an invisible wall before they could strike him and clattered away harmlessly.

  Just as Brynn was about to reach the man, the mud golem’s arm swatted her out of the air, sending her crashing against the trunk of a tree with a sickening crack before falling to the ground, where she lay in an unmoving heap.

  “Come with me, Genevieve, and I will spare their lives,” the man said.

  “No, brother, I can’t!” Gen cried defiantly, suddenly appearing at Brynn’s side. “Gather around me, everyone! We cannot fight him, he is far too powerful!”

  Stride didn’t need to be told twice and was sprinting towards the sorceress a full three seconds before Abner did the same and arrived at Brynn’s side at roughly the same time as the elves.

  “What’s the plan?” Eskar asked.

  “How far to your men in the north?” Gen asked, looking over Brynn with concern.

  “Roughly eighty seven miles,” the elf replied, and Abner let out an impressed whistle. The riding lizards could travel far more swiftly than any horse.

  “Due north?” Gen asked, pointing.

  “North is over there,” Stride said, his voice high with alarm as the mud golem slowly lumbered towards them.

  “Eighty seven miles that way?” Gen muttered to herself as she poured an iridescent blue powder from a leather pouch into her hand.

  “Eighty seven miles, more or less,” Eskar warned.

  Gen nodded. “Hold tight.”

  “Hold tight to what?” Abner asked as she began an incantation.

  “Me,” she replied upon finishing the incantation.

  The powder in her hand exploded in a blinding flash, and Abner only had time to grab onto the sorceress’ arm when he felt a nauseating sense of disorientation. Before his brain could process what had happened, he found himself falling from the sky. He looked around frantically to get his bearings and saw the forest canopy far beneath him, but approaching rapidly. Then, in the corner of his eye, he noticed a black trail that had been carved through the forest like an ugly scar. What was that? Not important, he decided. At least not for now. What was important was that they were falling. He racked his brain. What could he do?

  “Learn to fly,” a sardonic voice in his head replied.

  “Get ready!” Gen’s voice could scarcely be heard over the roaring wind as they fell.

  Abner realised that his hand was still tight around her arm and shifted his grip. In the corner of his eye, he saw that Stride was in free fall. The boy’s face was pale, and his eyes were squeezed shut. Abner reached out and grabbed him by the hair and pulled him close before wrapping his free arm around the boy’s waist just as Gen began another incantation.

  “Levitation!” she cried as they crashed through the upper branches of the trees.

  Abner’s stomach lurched when the speed of their descent decreased abruptly, and they began drifting to the ground like leaves caught on the breeze.

  “You can let go now,” Gen said.

  Abner released Gen’s arm and then grabbed it again when he felt himself drift away from her. “We don’t know where we are. It’s safer if we land as a group.”

  “We are on the wrong side of the Channel,” Eskar sighed. “Getting back will be challenging.”

  “We will have to worry about that later,” Gen replied as she looked down at Brynn’s still unmoving body beside her. The heavyset woman’s face was pale, but at least she was breathing, though her breaths were ragged and shallow.

  “Kara will see to her,” Eskar said, touching Brynn’s brow. “Sooner is better than later, though.”

  “All the same, a hard landing will do her no favours!” he cried out in alarm when they suddenly began to accelerate to the ground again.

  Gen’s face was a mask of concentration, and Kara remarked. “I’m afraid she doesn’t have much say in that. Brace yourself.”

  “Hold on, Stride,” Abner said through gritted teeth as he released the boy before cradling Brynn in both his arms.

  “She’s not going to appreciate that, you know?” Stride pointed out as he grabbed onto Abner’s gorget.

  Their descent quickened, and branches snapped around them as they fell towards the ground. They were roughly ten feet from the ground when Gen gasped. Abner looked over in time to see her eyes roll back in her head, and held Brynn tight when they plummeted the remaining distance to the ground at full speed.

  Abner muttered a quick prayer to Voldrus before crashing to the ground with a bone jarring thud that forced the wind from his lungs. He was pleased that he had managed to stay on his feet until he felt Brynn shudder in his arms. He looked down and was alarmed to see that the heavyset woman was now convulsing.

  “Help!” he cried, not knowing what to do.

  “Healing magic was never my forte,” Gen said through gritted teeth as she picked herself up.

  “Set her down!” Kara grunted as she struggled to untangle herself from Eskar, with whom she was lying in a heap a good distance away.

  Gently, Abner set Brynn on the ground and watched with despair as her body jerked around.

  “Hold her head still before she injures herself!” Kara ordered breathlessly as she crouched by Brynn’s side.

  Gen held her forehead to the ground while Abner used his bulk to pin her arms and legs down. While Kara stood over her with a pained look on her face. She studied Brynn for a moment before raising her staff and driving it into the ground.

  She began to chant, and the flowers in her staff began to bloom while the leaves grew greener and more radiant. The wind blew, causing yellowed leaves to fall from the trees around them in an alarming quantity. Abner was concerned and looked over to Stride, who looked distressed. Had the corruption followed them here?

  Kara pulled her staff from the ground and placed the tip against Brynn’s forehead. She cried a word in Elvish, and most of the flowers and leaves in her staff withered and were blown away by the wind. Meanwhile, Brynn’s spasms stopped. Abner looked at her face and saw that the colour had returned.

  “That’s incredible!” he exclaimed.

  “She needs rest,” Kara sighed, slumping to the ground. “But she will be fine, for now.”

  “They say that Ilarali will not lend Her powers to those who call upon the gifts of other Gods,” Gen said softly.

  Kara looked away before speaking softly. “That is the price of heresy. It is why many of us cannot understand why your Society’s Elders did what they did.”

  “It was in the name of understanding the way magic works,” Gen replied as she placed Brynn’s head in her lap and stroked her forehead. She then looked down at Brynn and muttered. “Why didn’t you tell me they gave you the Chromatic Cloak?”

  Abner watched Brynn, who was now fast asleep. The heavyset woman’s breathing was now regular, which Abner understood from his limited medical knowledge as a good sign. His attention strayed to her cloak, which was now a shade of gold that he had never seen before, and he wondered what it was.

  “We need to get our bearings,” Eskar said. “And find the others.”

  “I saw a dark black gouge in the lands as we fell,” Abner offered.

  “In which direction?” Eskar demanded.

  Abner looked around, but the fall had completely disoriented him. He looked back at Eskar and smiled sheepishly before shrugging.

  The elf’s face turned a deep shade of crimson, but before he could erupt, Stride spoke.

  “That way, roughly five miles,” he said, pointing.

  Eskar looked up at the sky and cursed. “That puts us on the wrong side of the Channel.”

  Abner’s blood turned cold at the tone in the elf Captain’s voice. “What do we do?”

  “Make the crossing,” he replied.

  “I saw a bridge of sorts,” Stride frowned. “But it’s dangerously low over the Channel.”

  “Is that a problem?” Gen asked.

  “Yes,” Eskar replied, his lips pressed in a thin, concerned line. “The Black Horde is marching through the Channel. They will not let us cross unmolested.”

  “Then we will just have to make the crossing unseen,” Abner said.

  “That is easier said than done,” Eskar warned.