Page 98 of Elven Crown

Was that what this was with Maxwell? Some missing piece she’d been looking for?

If that were true, this was a serious problem.

The second Rebecca started to care about something, to really care and to really want it, it all ended in ruin.

She didn’t think she could survive losing something so important all over again.

Neither would the others around her, if she suffered another loss like that.

No matter what, at all costs, she had to stay away from feeling anything for anyone that couldn’t be dropped at a second’s notice if she had to abandon this life too for the next.

But no matter how much logical sense her conviction made, a part of her was starting to believe it was already too late.

28

“You stop, you die!”

Theodil’s voice—a voice Rebecca hadn’t heard in countless decades—echoed through the chambers of her mind in her dream, as clear and crisp as the day her trainer had said those very same words to her.

Only now, she was back in the Lashir’i Gardens on Xahar’áhsh, reliving it all over again.

Rebecca ran at top speed, dodging a multitude of attacks in varying colors as they hurtled through the air toward her. Green and blue from behind. Fiery red from the left. Shimmering pink from up ahead and to her right. That one only looked enticing, as long as it didn’t touch her flesh.

Plus black roiling into silver that rushed toward her from any direction at any time, and she would never know.

All she knew was that she had to keep moving, because Theodil wasn’t toying with her, and he never lied.

If she stopped, she would die. It was that simple.

As Rebecca ran across the seemingly endless landscape, burst after burst of magical attack careened through the air toward her, most of them launched from half-living constructs erected for this single purpose. A few other attacks came from other living beings—a sentry guard stationed at the old watchtower; an errant corporal hidden in the bushes; Theodil again, wherever he’d decided to show up next.

There was always Theodil, who unleashed his own power on her every chance he got, though he never hid himself behind thick walls or disguised within the surrounding flora. No, he wanted her to see him when he executed his attacks, but only at the last second.

To test her reflexes.

Like he did now, appearing at the far-left edge of her periphery within a burst of that shadowy black light. A violent tremble cracked through the very earth beneath her when Theodil thrust the butt of his staff into the dirt.

Rebecca felt his attack barreling toward her, churning up mounds of dirt, fighting against the energy of the land to make its way toward her. She was up here on the ramparts, running across the elevated path toward her destination, far above the earth Theodil had struck.

But elevation meant nothing against the force of his power.

Rebecca reached the edge of the walkway marking the twelve-foot gap between this bit of the old ruins and the next.

But if she stopped, she died.

Still running at top speed, her legs churning and her feet pounding the old stone while her breath heaved in her lungs, made it impossible to slow. Just as she reached the edge of the stone walkway that had crumbled into ruin eons ago, Rebecca leapt over the chasm, her hands outstretched, one leg extended ahead of her and the other behind to gain all the reach she possibly could.

But halfway across the gap, Theodil’s attack erupted from within the earth.

A spray of hard-packed dirt, small stones, and blinding yellow light exploded beneath her. The thickest bolt of his magic shot straight up into the underside of her thigh, screaming through Rebecca’s lower limbs with blinding agony before she ever reached the other side of her jump.

Her muscles seized, her body betrayed her, and where she’d meant to land, her injured leg buckled. She crashed onto the opposite ledge of crumbling stone with a grunt.

The pain didn’t matter. Her sabotaged jump didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she kept moving.

“You stop, you die!”

She leapt to her feet, biting back another pained cry, pushing her weary muscles into motion again to keep running.

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