Chapter 571: Ashlynn’s Intervention
A sliver of the moon hung high in the sky as Ashlynn sat in the clearing at the edge of Ollie’s village. Brilliant emerald energy flowed from her hand, gently raining on the flame-haired youth as tears spilled from his eyes and his face contorted in expressions of heartwrenching pain, grief, and occasional moments of rage.
Tonight marked the end of the seventh day of his vigil and the beginning of the eighth. Already, his pale skin had begun to darken, taking on the rough texture of cypress bark while his hands clawed at the dirt, as if he wanted to put down roots in the soft, damp soil near the village pond.
"Is this, is this what it was like for me?" Heila asked, hovering nearby as she watched Ashlynn tending to Ollie. They had been confident that the young man wouldn’t need more than five or six days to pass his trial, but Ashlynn had left clear instructions just in case. If he failed to awaken on the seventh day, she was to be told immediately so she could offer whatever support she could in guiding him through the completion of his trial.
"He’s bold and brave," Ashlynn said softly. Her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were wet with tears as she connected to the vision she’d created within the seed to guide Ollie through his trial. She’d thought, when she established the terms of his trial, that she’d created a safe path that it would be nearly impossible for the young man to fail, but she’d clearly underestimated his strength and determination.
The Ollie she remembered from their time at the Summer Villa was mischievous and bold enough to sneak into parts of the Villa he shouldn’t have during banquets, just to peek at the knights in their fancy outfits and the beautiful ladies who might be dining with them.
At the same time, there was a timidness to him that had been beaten into what seemed like every fiber of his being, leaving him with stooped shoulders and a back that had bent from constantly bowing and scraping before Lord Owain and noblemen like him.
By the time Ashlynn left the Vale of Mists, Ollie had shown several signs of shaking off that timid, beaten down exterior, particularly when he joined with her and Thane to learn fighting arts, but what she’d seen had only been a glimmer of the man he would grow into under Thane and Marcel’s steady tutelage.
"He can stop whenever he wishes," Ashlynn explained. "But he isn’t satisfied, even though he’s come further than I ever imagined when I designed his trial. He wants to do better, to live up to my expectations and the expectations of the rest of the coven."
"But he knows, doesn’t he?" Heila said, her brows creased with worry as she knelt beside the young man. "He knows that we only want him to come back to us. He knows we’ll miss him if he doesn’t make it back, doesn’t he?"
"This is a man’s pride, big sister Heila," Virve’s voice rumbled from where she stood guard nearby. Villagers had begun to gather at the edge of the village overlooking Ollie’s trial since the dawn of the seventh day. In the beginning, many of them had thought that they would witness Ollie’s awakening today, but as day gave way to night and the Mother of Trees arrived to personally tend to Ollie, a dark cloud of worry had begun to form over the crowd of onlookers.