Page 1 of Fate & Monsters
Chapter 1
An oppressive dusk settled over the woods, shrouding the eve in a darkness that bore an omen. The song of night birds and crickets went silent and the whistling wind in the leaves was a blatant portent, sending dread prickling through me.
An owl cried as it soared alongside me over the peaks of long-lived trees. The sharp screeching call carried a warning, followed by the veil of night descending over the mountains and valleys of my home. The bird was a harbinger of something worse than humans steadily nearing the edge of my sanctuary. Something harboring malicious desires and cruel intentions, prowling after the scent of wondrous magic.
I floated in that direction, and though weighed down by uncertainty, I saw clearly a vision—a prophecy of a red river bleeding into the land and poisoning everything within. What force existed in the world with the power to pollute a forest steeped in centuries of magic?
Windborne, I soared through the starlight-kissed woods, gliding over a path well-worn. I fluttered past a familiar bubbling brook that split off into a wide, coursing river. Undaunted by visions of crimson stained corruption, I swept through the sky, the breeze, and found solace in my thoughts.
Horizons brightened and darkened. The moon changed again and again, and the winds whistled their usual tune as days, maybe months, passed. Though each time I glanced to the west, visions of a red poison crashed beneath the shadows.
And the moon changed again, forever chased by the sun, whether waxing or waning. On a night like any other, when the moon was full in the sky, pregnant with silver light, another disturbance breached the land. An abnormal force of magic infringed on the protective barrier of my sanctuary. It crept in, slithering like a snake in a garden.
I drifted toward the fracture, half expecting to find careless mortals. Instead, I found a bat. A black bat larger than any I’d seen before. Emblazoned on her back, spread across her fluttering wings, a skull.
“Where were you?” the bat cried in a woman’s voice. It had been so long since I’d heard voices spoken aloud. It took me several moments to remember their words, their strange languages. Wind spoke with howls and gusts, not tongues.
Startled, I floated away from the creature.
The bat swooped in the air and flared her wings. Lightning cracked across the sky and her body erupted into clouds of smoke. A gasp escaped me, as the inky smoke twirled upward into the shape of a woman garbed in form-fitting robes.
“It is my luck that I would find the last. And now it is too late,” she said, looking up at me. “It’s too late for the sylphs.”
“What do you know of sylphs, witch?”My thoughts stalled. “Have you seen others of my kind? Do you know where the sylphs are?”
“You don’t know?” The witch swiped at her cheeks, stumbling to her feet. “There are no more sylphs. They have been hunted to theedge of the world.”
“No.”I drew back, shaking my head. “It is not possible.”
“I would not lie to you.” She pressed her hands, wrinkled one second and spotless the next, to her chest. “I am afraid that the mage is coming for you.”
She spoke of the thing returning to my dreams—the witch knew of the crimson haze. The dreams were true visions, after all.
“Who are you to know the fate of the air spirits?”
“I am the High Witch Aradia, and I have searched for sylphs for a hundred years.” She dazzled me with a show of her magic; sparks shot into the air from her fingers, the ground rumbled, and the wind rushed.
I floated a few paces back. “How do I know you are not hunting my kind, Aradia?”
“I would never, blessed sylph.” Even as her magic stilled, the wind continued howling, shaking the boughs together. She glanced over her shoulder, sensing the same shift in the air I called home. The brittle tension carried a portent of doom. “Listen to me, listen please, you are in danger, sylph.”
“There is no danger to me. I am one with the air and sky.”
“He is coming, the last mage, and he will find you,” Aradia said.
“What mage?”
Aradia opened her mouth to speak, but a ruby glow from above cut her off. The witchand I glanced up. Her breath caught and I watched in horror as the pearly light of the moon wept red. A crimson ring haloed the once silver orb, casting a bloodied glow on the land.
A tidal wave of terror dawned on me. There was no more denial in the face of my visions erupting in the sky.
“It is too late; he is coming for you!” she warned.
“Who? Who is this wizard?”I urged.“What has become of the sylphs?”
“The wizard, Gustave Roan. A monster obsessed with dark magic and exterminating magical creatures. He’s spent decades hunting spirits such as yourself!” The ground shook again, rumbling and quaking all around us. Not from her magic or mine. “The wizard seized power across several centuries, labeling himself as the Crimson Mage. He is to blame. He has chased mythical creatures and elemental spirits to the cusp of extinction, and now he is coming for you!”
All around us, the nature of the forest reacted to the encroaching disturbance. A wave of red assaulted the edge of the woods, a barrage of dark magic cascading over everything it touched. Miles away still, yet I heard the clamber of hundreds of soldiers, the thump of boots, and weapons singing for blood as their wielders cradled them. At the head of the horde, I sensed him—I felt the magnitude of the darknessenveloping the wizard who hunted creatures of magic.
