Page 10 of The Ninth Element

A voice, deep in the core of my being, fights against the encroaching wave of despair. I have no doubt that this sorrow, just like the earlier fear, is amplified by the mist, but I still can not stop it from numbing me fromthe inside out.

If you can’t face it, run… run away from it.

And that, I do.

I turn my back on the perfect family I could never be a part of, and I run. I run as fast as my trembling legs can carry me, but the uneven ground offers no easy escape. My foot catches again, and I pitch forward, crashing down hard onto my already bloodied and battered knees. The impact steals my breath as pain explodes through me. The panic surges back with a vengeance, amplified by the fresh agony in my heart from the memory that the mist so cruelly resurrected.

This must be the real trial. To fight against your worst fears and wounds.

It was a long time ago. It was the pain of someone else. Another girl, not you. Not the Arien you are now. You should not let it affect you.

I take another shuddering breath and force my head up, steeling myself to rise, resume my trek, and push through this nightmare.

And there, right in front of me… Thereheis again.

High Lord Hoomyn Helmsworth. But this time, he isn’t looking lovingly at Hannah. This time, he is looking directly atme. And I know that expression. Oh, gods, I know it. Because I’ve seen that gaze on me only once before in my entire life, and the image is seared into my soul. I am still on all fours, unable to move or look away.

I grew up hidden away with the gruff gamekeeper and his sharp-tongued wife on the far outskirts of the Myrielfort estate, unaware of my true lineage. I knew only that the people I lived with, the people who fed me and clothed me in roughspun, weren’t my own.

When I was six, I overheard the castle gardeners calling me the High Lord’s bastard. After that, I’d often snuck onto the castle grounds, watching the seemingly perfect family from afar. The High Lord always appeared to be such a loving father to Hyrad and Hannah, so gentle, so attentive, not like a man who would willingly abandon his own flesh and blood.

So, my mind created a twisted story to explain it all. I’d known I had strange abilities for as long as I could remember. I never told a soul. I was certaintheywere the reason I was abandoned. Because I was cursed. So,I’d practiced concealing my sorcery for years, desperately hoping it would eventually wither and die, andthenmy father would finally accept me.

It was a few moons before I turned nine. I hid myself in one of Myrielfort’s shadowy halls, having overheard the servants whispering that the High Lord would be returning late. I waited for hours. It was the first time I was going to try to speak to my father. To show him that I was normal. That I wasn’t cursed.

The moment I stepped out of the shadows, I saw recognition in his eyes as they momentarily widened. But that recognition died as quickly as it appeared, replaced by an impenetrable coldness. After years of witnessing his boundless love for his trueborn children, I was met with nothing but utter disdain.

Now, he is standing before me in this mist with that exact same expression. He opens his mouth, and my heart sinks, filled with an absolute certainty of exactly what he is going to utter. It would be the only words he has ever spoken in my presence. And just as I expected, he speaks that very single, brutally dismissive sentence he said all those years ago to the woman standing beside him: “Take her away.”

Tears, hot and shameful, stream down my cheeks. He turns and walks away, just as he had back then, leaving me shattered.

I want to run, to hide. I don’t want to be here anymore, even if it means forfeiting the trials. I am shaking uncontrollably, and the tears are falling unheeded. I hide my face in my hands, and the old despair coils around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.

I need to fight back. I need to claw my way out of these shadows, but I feel utterly drained and hollowed out. Even though I know, on some rational level, that this is an illusion, that the mist had picked the exact, perfect weapon to defeat me. Just like the fear, this despair is also not normal.

Arien… fight back… don’t surrender to the darkness. Don’t let him win. Not again.

But I feel defenseless, exposed. The crushing wave of terror and sorrow is overwhelming. I curl up on the cold, damp dirt, instinctively trying to make myself as small as possible. It used to work, sometimes,when I was a child. But it isn’t helping now. I am drowning, sinking into a black, airless void.

Just as I feel the last vestiges of hope slipping away, a shadow falls over me.

Chapter Four

I look up, my vision swimming, and there she is…

This, too, is a memory from that night. She had been there, too, twelve years ago. The woman who stood silently behind the High Lord, the one to whom he’d issued that dismissive order to take me away.

Back then, she simply flicked her wrist and used sorcery to clean my clothes as I had spoiled them out of fear. Now, she is standing above me again, a calm, steady presence in the swirling chaos of my mind. The woman I have, in many ways, come all this way for. TheMartyshyar.

I still don’t know why she, a sorceress turned Martyshyar, had been with my father in that dark corridor of Myrielfort. But she took my trembling hand gently in hers. She led me back to the gamekeeper’s cottage on the edge of the estate.

During that walk, I asked her if she was cursed like me. I’d never seen sorcery performed before. When I told her about my abilities, she told me that I was just like her, a sorceress. She promised she would send a bird to Firelands so they would come and take me away.

She visited me daily after that, teaching me the basics of reading and writing, to prepare me for the rigorous studies of Firelands, even though we had so little time before Spring. She told me that she herself had once been a Firelander but had chosen the path of Martysh, and had only recently become a Martyshyar.

When envoys from Firelands finally arrived to collect me, the Martyshyar hugged me goodbye. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been hugged. It was brief, but it was the most profoundly comforting touch I had ever felt.

Over the long years that followed, in the austere halls of Fire Temple, the memory of her kindness was a candle against the darkness. She showed me that genuine kindness exists, that there are people in the world who do not always have ulterior motives, who do not expect something in return for a simple act of compassion. And when, a few years later, I found a book about the history and ideals of Martysh… it reminded me of her. She embodied everything I wanted to be: courageous, strong, powerful, and yet… kind.

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