After a long time, I grow silent, completely spent. III’s limbs wrap around me, and I begin a slow slide into unconsciousness.

And then, like the darkness surrounding me, I, too, fade to black.

CHAPTER FOUR

FOREST GUARDIAN

Elloren

Northern Forest

I awaken to a different darkness.

Filled with the sense of being cradled at the very center of the world, the very center of magic, as my heart breaks open and images of everyone I love and care about scroll through my mind. My brothers. My beloved friends and newfound family. Olilly and Nym’ellia and all of the people at risk in both Realms.

Lukas and Yvan.

The aching desire to have one more chance to be with them all and fight with them tightens my emotions. Along with the anguished yearning to work for a different future for Erthia. A future without division and oppression.

Free of the demon tide.

As if prompted by my surge of love and yearning, life is suddenly pouring back into my body. An invigorating warmth flows into my veins that has the feel of warm sap in a thawing trunk. It prompts a deep, wavering intake of air as what feel like tendrils of branches wind around my legs, my arms.

Every last part of me.

Knitting my Shadow-ravaged self and broken ankle back together.

I gasp as the breath of the Great Tree blows through me and begins to flow magic into my affinity lines, element by element, my battered lines mending as I become startlingly aware of what these lines have been all along.

Not veins in the island of my body.

They’re roots.

I’m not an island at all. I’m connected to something much bigger than myself.

My breath gathers strength in my lungs, my mouth strange to me as I test my jaw, grind teeth that feel unfamiliar, run my tongue over sharp molar edges that have never been sharp before. My ears stretch upward as if pulled by threads and the pain of my broken ankle is soothed by the gentle brush of leaves.

Dryad.

Dryad Guardian.

III’s voice is as gentle as spring rain and as powerful as a fierce storm. And I can sense, all at once, the great span of III, how far its roots stretch out—throughout the whole Northern Realm and beyond. Throughout the whole world.

And into me.

A series of hazy visions of trees and forests begins to form in my mind, a mind once again completely my own as my affinity roots gather strength within me—

Fire, Earth, Air, Wind.

And Green Light.