Page 89 of Blood of Ancients

Corym was next to me one second, the next he was gone—blipped out of existence. I felt my pulse spike as warmth settled over me. My mind rolled in a million different directions.

Then Corym reappeared somewhere ahead—aheadbeing a vague notion in this strange confluence of space and time.

I hurried forward, walking on nothing but the green and blue wave-road under my feet. The motes did not hurt or heal or feel like anything when they touched me, goingthroughmy body like I didn’t even exist here. Like I wasn’t supposed to be here, disrupting the natural order of things.

“Here,lunis’ai! Follow my voice when you cannot see me!”

I whipped around—Corym was suddenly behind me, running to catch up.

“Corym!” I cried out, reaching to try and grasp him.

It was like trying to catch the wind itself.

My other mates and Kelvar also went in and out of existence. I did the best I could to follow Corym’s voice. Yet I didn’t know which direction was north, south, east, or west.

Finally, choosing a direction and sticking with it, I ran. My feet made no sound in the cloudlike ambiance. There was nothing beyond the colors I could see ahead, a kaleidoscope of wondrous hues and tones.

I could feel nothing. Neither numbness nor pain—again, like I did not exist in that moment. But in my head, I worried. As usual, I feared I would lose my mates. That we might all pop out in different places, scattered across Alfheim—if we could evenfindthe realm of the Ljosalfar!

I should have been sweating. The fear and claustrophobia that set in should have overwhelmed me, yet it didn’t. My mind told me to put one foot in front of the other, so I did.

I had no idea how long I walked. Only that, eventually, the shimmering barrier of what looked like a wall—weaving in and out of existence—appeared on either side of me.

I recognized a corridor when I saw one, even if this one seemed to rise and fall, twist and turn, without any rhyme or reason. It gave me some foundation; a place to walk through.

Sven’s voice rang in my head, calling me a “little menace,” but it mixed with Grim’s low timbre, urging me forward. Arne was a scatter-shot of vibrations in my soul and mind, while Corym kept riding through the crazed nonsense like a beacon.

I followed that beacon, utterly alone yet feeling my mates around me at the same time. They ventured through the same trial I did, and I needed to stop myself from panicking so I could complete this transport.

Blood rushed to my head. I had the vague distinction I was goingup, as if running along the sky. I put my arms out and pumped, swimming now, no longer using my feet to guide me.

“There,lunis’ai! There!”

Gasping, hearing no sounds come from my lips, I swiveled my head left and right. A bright light shone off to the left, on the other side of the shimmering, semi-transparent green wall.

I stepped through, willing myself to walk through the wall and hoping it would work.

It did, and then the light was growing brighter and brighter, like a candle near the end of its wick, just before snuffing out. The explosion of color reached me in a rainbow—

I grabbed at it, wiggling my fingers, trying to take the palm-sized brightness in my hand.

And then I was falling.

Fast.

“Ahhh!” I cried out—

Weightlessness consumed me and lifted my stomach to my brain. I pinwheeled, arms and legs kicking wildly, as the blurry ground rushed up to meet me—green, effervescent ground. It was a hue of green so unlike anything I’d ever seen in nature.

Something caught my side, and with an “Oof” I was spun left and right, losing all sense of direction. I landed with a thud, hard, and expected I’d broken some bones from the way the air left my lungs and the odd angle I’d fallen at.

I was on my back, numbness washing away now, staring up at a blue-green sky. Above me, a gnarled tree branch jutted out into my vision, with a tuft of my fur coat stuck on the end of it where it had struck me.

No bones were broken. Other than a dull throb in my side, the brilliant green grass I’d landed on had caught me like a damned cloud.

I panted, shallowly at first, before a rush of thoughts and sensations rolled through me at an alarming speed.

Sitting up, my head ached slightly, and I put a hand to my forehead, ready to vomit. The echoes of my trippy journey through the Midgard portal were still drowning away, fading, turning into nothing more than white noise in the background of my mind.

---