Page 4 of The Dryad Storm

“When she gets hold of herself, we’re going to need her,” Alcippe says to Vestylle.

Alder looks on listlessly as the warriors turn toward where she’s still bunchedup on the ground at the edge of the clearing in the gloomy twilight. Alder can practically feel the grief spitting off her own grayed skin, her rootlines stripped raw. Killed off, like her Forest.

Like Azion.

“She needs time,” Vestylle insists, face tense. “She just lost her Forest. Herkindred—”

“There is notime!” Alcippe snaps back, her tattooed features twisting. “The Mages used their attack on Noilaan aspractice. The destruction of Amazakaraan waspractice. And killing the greatest queen who ever lived, morepractice!” Alcippe shakes her head, seeming too choked up to continue.

Grief for Queen Alkaia knifes through Alder, followed by a welling of rancid misery for her friend Valasca and the gentle Icaral Wynter Eirllyn, both taken prisoner by the Mages.

Alcippe drags her hand across her eyes, swiping away tears. “Apparently, while we were all caught in the portal lag, the Mage Roaches annexed the entirety of Issaan. Refugees are streaming into Noilaan. The Issani brought the last surviving flock of their giant Saffron Eagles with them, but the birds are going to die. They won’t eat. They need their natural habitat, but it’s gone. The Mages razed Issaan’s entire Olneya Forest.”

Vestylle glances at Alder with concern, and Alder knows her friend is worried about the mention of eagles and forests. And she’s right to be. It’s like a knife strike straight through Alder’s chest to hear of yet more displaced eagles and their destroyed habitat. She also knows that the destruction of the giant Saffron Eagles and their Forest is a chilling omen written about in the Issani religious texts, signaling the triumph of the incoming Shadow evil.

Stricken, Alder looks toward the decimated Vo Mountain Range. She overheard that they’re in Noilaan’s Vo Forest, about a league north of Voloi. But even this far from the city, the purple trees carpeting the mountain’s slope are tinged gray, a remnant of Vogel’s Shadow attack on Voloi.

The Magedom’s Shadow poison entrenched here in the East just as it is in the West.

Alcippe gestures toward her. “We’re going to need Alder’s forest-empath abilities to read where Elloren Gardner Grey is through the trees.”

Alder startles. Through her morass of grief, her every last Dryad sense pricks up. The recesses of her mind light with memories of her moments in Verpacia withElloren Gardner Grey, a Dryad-lineage one. An untethered Mage, like all Mages, shunned by the Forest.

But Elloren... she was different from so many Mages. So much so that Alder and Valasca allied with her to rescue trafficked Selkies as well as to free the Icaral Ariel Haven and the Icaral child Pyrgo from Valgard’s prison.

Every nerve on alert, Alder listens as Alcippe and Vestylle converse in low tones. Alcippe conveys what they’ve learned of the Magedom’s attack on the Eastern Realm—Voloi and its Wyvernguard are in ruins. And a freak explosion took out the top half of the Vo Mountain Range and Vogel’s hidden Shadow forces within it, that explosion responsible for saving the rest of Noilaan from Mage invasion and complete Shadow destruction.

“I was right about the Crow Witch,” Alcippe says, her tone as weighty as the huge axe strapped to her back. “Elloren Gardner Grey is Vogel’s witch now. She conjured a great Shadow tree over the Vo River. Almost destroyed the entirety of Voloi and beyond until the Icaral male Yvan Guryev struck her down, asI should havewhen I had the chance.”

Urgency lights in Alder, her mother’s blood swelling in her veins with its mix of Wyvern, Urisk, and Ishkart heritage. Alder remembers her Wyvern senses picking up the fire churning in Yvan Guryev, back when she thought him Yvan Guriel, part Fire Fae, never suspecting the wings he was hiding. She also remembers how his fireburnedfor Elloren Gardner Grey.

And Elloren... her desire to fight against the Magedom and for her allies and loved ones was true.

And she burned for Yvan Guryev in return.

Alder chews over this information, shocked that Yvan was the one to bring the Black Witch down. Then shocked again as she listens, with her Wyvern hearing, to learn that Elloren escaped the Eastern Realm, Vogel having taken over her body and mind.

Alder’s grief implodes into an abyss, scouring her out fully.

Because things are truly over for every Forest on Erthia.

It’s only a matter of time.

With his captive Black Witch and growing Shadow power, Vogel will beunstoppable.

So, a few hours later, when Alcippe calls to her in a stilted attempt at a gentle voice, “Alder, Queen Freyja has summoned you to her,” instead of heeding the callto any queen, Alder gets up on unsteady legs and walks away from Alcippe and Vestylle.

Because it’s all over.

“Let her go,” she hears Vestylle urge as Alder stumbles into the unfamiliar purple woods, not caring about the tears blurring her vision, not caring if she walks through this foreign wilderness until she passes out. Wanting to die with the last remnants of living Forest.

As the purple trees close in around her and thunder drums in the distance, this Forest’s unfamiliar birdsong wrenches her heart anew.

Eventually, Alder falls to her knees, wave upon wave of sorrow swamping her. She presses her palms to the dark purple trunk before her, hangs her head and weeps.

She senses the Forest waking up to her. Senses the settling of its gentle aura around her shoulders like a soft cloak. And then, its rippling wave of connection, Tree’kin to Tree’kin.

The love and complex beauty in this purple Forest’s enfolding energy shatters Alder’s heart anew, because she knows what’s coming—the Magedom’s Shadow magic is going to consume this Forestwhole, along with every other surviving Forest.

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