Page 165 of The Shadow Wand

I’ll protect you. We all will, I promised her that night.

I wonder—is Fern in the Noi lands right now, clutching her beloved doll? Safe for the moment?

Not safe for long if these insect beasts come for her.

Not if Vogel comes for her.

Another vision accosts my mind—an army of the many-eyed insect monsters swarming into the Eastern Realm. And Fern, running from them as a massive foreclaw slams down toward her small frame...

No.

I inhale and flex my hand against the Wand.

I’ll protect you. We all will.

I scan the darkness of the wilds, the hostile trees, knowing that Lukas is right.

I need to be strong. Even in the face of impossible odds. Even in the face of a monstrous attack.

Because this is bigger than all of us.

A shimmer of light catches my eye, and I look up to find a Watcher sitting high in the dark canopy of forest, the gleaming ivory bird there and then vanishing from sight.

I pull in a surprised breath, both chastened and inspired by the sight. There’s an echo of anguish still swimming in me, but I find the strength to tamp it down.

“I need your help in learning how to fight like a soldier,” I admit to Lukas, to all of them. “I’m not trained like all of you. I’m a violin maker and an apothecary. I’ve never seen combat. I need your help.”

“We’ll train you,” Lukas says, passionate resolve in his gaze as he steps toward me.

“How much longer until we can get out of here?” Valasca asks Chi Nam, her tone urgent. “We can’t train anyone if we’re eaten by demonic insects.” The portal’s center is now lit with a silver sheen, and I notice that the runes on Chi Nam’s staff and the hilts of Valasca’s rune blades are brightly charged once more.

“Any minute now,” Chi Nam answers as she scrutinizes the brightening portal, and I push my Wand back into my tunic’s pocket, my magic’s pull toward it drawing down.

Lukas cuts a hard look at Chi Nam and Valasca. “Stay sharp. There could be more scorpios. They normally swarm.”

Valasca brings her black gaze to me. “If that rune on your stomach so much as pricks, you tell us. Understand?”

I nod as Lukas comes down to one knee and studies the wreckage of the mantis’s body, prodding it with his wand. Revulsion ripples through me at the sight of the grotesque corpse. Tendrils of smoke are curling up from the shadowy runes on its thorax like undulating steam.

“What is that thing?” I ask, forcing myself to keep looking at it.

“A desert scorpio,” Lukas says as he eyes the creature’s mangled carcass. “They’re not indigenous to the Western Realm.”

“They’re common in much of the Eastern Desert, though,” Valasca adds. “But this one...it’s corrupted by some kind of twisted magic. Its appearance is distorted.”

I look to her. “They’re normally different from this?”

“Oh, they’re nothing you want to meet without a weapon.” Valasca gives a grim chuckle, not taking her eyes off the thing. “But this one...” She narrows her eyes at the beast’s remains. “This one is bizarrely stretched out.”

I think of the Marfoir—the horrible Elfin assassins that came for Wynter—and how unnaturally tall and stretched out they were, with horns of undulating smoke and gray insectile eyes...

I take in the eyes swarming around the scorpio’s two main eyes. “Do they normally have so many eyes?”

Valasca shakes her head. “No. Normal scorpios have two compound eyes and that’s it.”

Lukas points to one of the deep-green Gardnerian runes that mark the scorpio’s body. He looks to me. “Elloren, this is a deflection rune. You need to be able to recognize these.”

I study the circular deep-green rune and its internal telescoping pattern. “What does it do?” I ask, remembering his strident warning to Chi Nam and Valasca.

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