Page 59 of The Dryad Storm

“What is it you see?” Diana presses. A command to answer, but kindly leveled.

Alder grips a purple root spilling down from above, the entire Forest’s mosaic of thought filling her mind. “The Forest has absorbed Elloren,” she answers. She grows quiet once more, flooded by the sensation of a cataclysmic shifting of energy throughout the entire Forest Matrix of Erthia, all of it contracting toward a single point.

Elloren.

“What do you mean by ‘absorbed’?” Trystan asks.

Alder closes her eyes and lets herself slip back into the Forest’s mind’s eye. “I see an image of Elloren the Forest Witch,” she says. “Surrounded by branches. Roots flowing down from her feet. Green light sparking through her rootlines—”

“Rootlines?” Rafe cuts in. “Has the Forest imprisoned her?”

Alder opens her eyes to find Rafe’s amber eyes glowing with intensity, his fists flexed, every muscle coiled, as if he’s ready to rip through the entire Forest to find his sister.

“No,” Alder clarifies as she struggles to maintain her link to the Forest’s full aura, the Lupine alphas’ air of command a difficult thing to think past. She closes her eyes once more and concentrates. “I’m piecing out more. The Great Prophecy... it’s still written in the trees, but...” Her eyes bolt open, and she looks to Elloren’s allies in great confusion. “The Forest has flipped its allegiance.”

The black-haired, green-glimmering Lupine, Aislinn Ulrich, gasps, her amber eyes widening. “But that would set the Forest against Yvan—”

“The Prophecy isrubbish,” Trystan cuts in. “We shouldn’t be giving it any credence, whatsoever.”

“Can you read where Elloren is?” Sagellyn Za’Nor presses, her purple-hued expression tight with urgency as she clenches her wounded hands, chains of pain-dampening runes wound around them to assuage the bloodied gashes from her broken fasting. Sage’s heavily armed mate, the Smaragdalfar monarch, Ra’Ven Za’Nor, stands beside her, his silver eyes intent.

“Elloren is in the Northern Forest,” Alder states.

They’re all silent, trading sober looks.

The Northern Forest.

Leagues and leagues away.

Another series of images flashes through Alder’s mind, and she holds up a hand. “There is a man of fire in the Northern Forest... waiting for Elloren to emerge from the Great Tree... the prophesied Icaral the trees are aligning against—Yvan Guryev. And there’s a flock of giant ravens and two Fae’kin traveling through a Dryad portal toward the Forest Witch’s location... an Asrai Fae woman I know... Tierney Calix... and a Man of Death and Serpents.”

A human-size spider emerges from the cavern’s shadows, and Alder startles, recoiling as the spider swiftly scuttles toward them. Her breath caught in her chest, Alder watches as the great spider morphs into a petite, dark-hued woman with tight black curls, her posture almost demure, save for the extra six dark eyes set around her two main ones.Sylla Vuul, Alder registers, awe mingling with her fear—one of the three Wyvernguard Deathkin she overheard the Amaz speaking of.

“Viger is the Man of Death and Serpents you speak of,” Sylla Vuul tells Alder, her voice’s subterranean thrum sending a cool shiver down Alder’s spine. “The giant crows,” Sylla continues, “are Errilor Death Ravens. They have returned to align with the Forest Witch. I have read the reverberations of this bond-intension in the web matrix of my spider kindreds.”

“Vogel will come for Elloren,” Alder warns. “With an army the likes of which Erthia has never seen.”

“Well, we’ll be coming for the Magedom with our own army,” Diana Ulrich snarls, exposing sharp, gleaming canines.

The fine hairs on the back of Alder’s neck bristle.

Gray smoke abruptly tendrils across Alder’s tree-vision, Elloren’s allies whisked from sight as a more potent Forest-vision invades her mind.

Marcus Vogel—staring straight at her through her withering root connection to the destroyed Wilds of Amazakaraan. As he siphons their elemental power up into his Wand. His cruel mind touches Alder’s, his slithering Shadow winding tight around her rootlines. The images of Elloren then Yvan then Shadow wrapped around a spiraling green-glowing wand blast through Alder’s mind with agonizing force.

Alder cries out and wrests her hands from the purple root, falling back onto the cavern’s stone. The terrifying connection snaps loose, her body trembling from it.

“I briefly linked to Vogel,” she rasps. “He’s not just going after Elloren and the Wilds.”

“What else does he seek?” Wrenfir Harrow demands, the Mage’s kohl-rimmed, spider-tattoo-bracketed green eyes hard as granite.

Alder meets Wrenfir’s furious gaze. “Vogel seeks a Wand of Power,” she answers. “The green Wand-Stylus crafted from a branch of the Great Source Tree, III. The Verdyllion.”

“The Sacred Wand-Stylus of Myth,” the bespectacled Kelt, Jules Kristian, comments. “Known to every culture on Erthia by a unique name.” He exchanges a pointed look with Mage Lucretia Quillen beside him, and Alder’s empathy is momentarily distracted by the sensation of Lucretia’s invisible water aura ardently encircling Jules.

“Elloren had possession of the Zhilin Wand-Stylus,” Kam Vin notes from where she stands beside her silent sister, Ni Vin, lines of Vu Trin silver stars strapped across the sisters’ black uniformed chests.

“It’s unlikely Elloren has it still,” Andras postulates, “or Vogel would have taken hold of it when he had control of her.”

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