Page 24 of The Dryad Storm

Marina’s stream of dread turns into a swifter current of alarm as the incoming Shadow tide comes to a roaring halt before Noilaan’s shield. A net of Shadow flows up and over the huge dome-shield, and Marina and Gareth slow, treading water, as the Shadow net dims the world to a darker shade of steel and Gareth takes his mangrove root in hand.

“Gareth,” Marina manages, gills flaring, “the Noi runes on the East’s shield... they won’t be strong enough to hold back the Shadow. The Mage, Alaric—he told of its rune-destroying abilities.”

“Is anything strong enough to hold it back?” he presses.

She nods. “Alaric and the Selkie Nerissa went to a Shadow-destroyed continent in the West. They read the journals of a Death Fae who witnessed the Shadow’s destruction there and learned that Varg magic can fight against Shadow. And—” her eyes widen with the spark of an idea “—so canDryad magic.”

Marina’s attention is snagged once more by the mangrove’s pull, her new lines of energy crackling to brighter life throughout her body. Gareth’s head jerks toward the mangroves. “Do you feel that?” he asks.

“They’re pulling on the lines forming in me,” she affirms, her gills ruffling as she meets his stare. “The Mage affinity lines I gained when we joined our tides and merged our powers.”

Gareth’s ocean green eyes narrow on hers. “I think the mangroves are trying to tell us something, and I think we should follow their pull. When I’m close to the center of the grove, my magic amplifies. If I send out magic from there, my Dryad power might be strong enough to strengthen Noilaan’s shielding.”

Exchanging a blazing look of agreement, they launch themselves back toward the purple saltwater trees at a fast stroke.

Darting underwater, they glide through the mangroves’ arcing roots and slow before the huge roots of the grove’s central, largest tree. The pull of the tree on Marina’s new lines of energy tingles under her skin and through her hands, urging her closer. Surrendering to the pull, they both press their palms to one of the tree’s roots.

All the power of the grove swoops in around them in a whirling tide, and the scene around Marina cuts out as both she and Gareth are drawn into the purple-shimmering darkness of the huge mangrove trunk’s center.

They reach for each other at the same time, pulling each other into a protective embrace as Marina is filled with a vision of a huge tree made of prismatic starlight and covered in ethereal birdslinkingto them, its stunningly potent energy intimately connected to the mangroves, feeding Life and Balance into them through a continent-spanning network of roots.

The trees of the continent all connected.

The huge tree’s name—III—resonating through her mind.

But then, nightmare images assault Marina—scenes of Erthia’s every tree being consumed by a Shadow storm, the gray-roiling skies siphoning up the Natural World’s land power to rain poison down on Erthia’s previously pure, Life-giving Waters, choking the life and color out of them.

Marina lets out a strangled cry as she’s overcome by a fuller sense of how the land and Ocean are connected in their vulnerability.

The visions of Erthia’s destruction dissipate, and a new vision emerges—the suspended, pulsing image of a spiraling Wand-Stylus glowing with prismatic light. The name of this magical tool reverberates through her mind.

Verdyllion.

Urgency shivers through Marina, the lines of energy in her hand pulling toward the Wand-Stylus, the sense of an invitation to join with the power of the Forest through the Verdyllion burbling up.

“I will help you fight the Shadow power,” Marina murmurs to the Verdyllion, and she’s instantly swept up in an escalating sense ofrightnessas she reaches out at the same time Gareth does, and they bring their hands to the Wand-Stylus.

The image of the Verdyllion flares into rays of chromatic light, sending both Marina and Gareth spiraling down through the Great Tree’s dark center. They grab hold of each other, another flash of color bursting through both Marina’s sight and lines as color and sound pour back into the world and the mangrove forest around her snaps back into clarity.

Her gills and lungs struggling to pull in an even breath, Marina finds herself wrapped around Gareth and just above the grove’s sloshing waterline, her back to the huge mangrove’s trunk. He draws slightly back from her, astonishment rippling through Marina as she blinks at an equally astonished Gareth, amazed by his transformation.

There’s a deeper forest green hue and shimmer to his skin, a purple mangrove branching pattern overlaying it, his previously naked form now garbed with purplearmor made from fused mangrove leaves. She reaches up to run her fingers over the Dryad Fae points now gracing both of Gareth’s ears, noting the broader streaks of Selkie-silver and a new streak of mangrove-purple that now color his tousled black hair.

Marina glances down and is amazed to find herself garbed in the same armor, her sealskin secure around her shoulders, an identical deep purple pattern branching over her own dark blue skin. A sting crackles against her palm, and her gaze slides to it. Astonishment wells as she takes in the image imprinted there of the Great Tree from the vision she had in the mangrove, a sense of Erthia’s entire Forest network joining to her sense of Erthia’s Waters.

Marina holds her palm up to Gareth, and he responds by raising his identically marked palm. “I saw the Great Tree in a vision,” he hastily imparts.

“I saw it too—”

Marina’s words break off as something slick slides around her arm and gently hugs her. She looks down to find it’s an octopus tentacle, a prism of hues rippling over the color-shifter’s hide. Other tentacles embrace her calf, her waist, and the water around them lights up with swirls of the octopuses’ glowing color as Marina is hit by a palpable wave of the creatures’ joyous affection.

One tentacle tip twirls gently around her finger, the octopuses’ energy suddenly rippling through Marina’s newfound lines in a rush of prismatic light as their magic connects not only with her but with the energy of the surrounding mangrove forest.

My kindred ones, Marina thinks, as a multitude of bonds to these beautiful, bioluminescent creatures lock into place.

A pang of affection tightens Marina’s heart as Salish Electric Eels swim in to join the octopuses, their dark purple bodies pulsing with multicolored lightning. Bioluminescent cat sharks, dragonfish, firefly squid and jellyfish emerge into view, all of them pulsing chromatic light through the water, as if summoned there by their own mangrove call.

“The Great Tree,” Marina shakily says to Gareth as her bond to her octopuses swells in her breast, “it bound me to both the mangroves and all these kindreds.”

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