Book 3: Chapter 2 – A Time of Loss [Part 1]
Book 3: Chapter 2 - A Time of Loss [Part 1]
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.”
- Earl Grollman
Morning light pooled pale and silent across the rafters when Mina opened her eyes after a fitful rest after watching the dawn. The house, normally alive with the breakfast clatter of kettles and Levine’s off‑key humming at such an hour, lay utterly still. It was as though it had drawn a breath in the night and forgotten to release it. Outside, birds twittered on the thatch, yet their song sounded distant. The girl rose, slid bare feet over the cool floorboards, and padded down the corridor to look around. She ventured sheepishly into the dining room downstairs and saw that the hearth embers had gone grey and brittle, likely abandoned hours ago.
She called softly—once for Levine, once for Gaellan. No answer. Only the steady drip of the leaky gutter outside and the creak of beams settling. Something else was off. The wall beside the dining table stood naked: Gaellan’s curved sword, always there like a silent sentinel, was gone. Its absence left a shape in the air, a gap she could almost see. She brushed trembling fingertips over the iron hooks. Had Levine borrowed it? Impossible; he would never touch his father’s blade. Last night’s whispered argument ghosted back to her: Gaellan’s warning that reckoning would come, that secrets could not stay buried. A knot cinched in her stomach.
Had that time come?
Unease tugged her toward Levine’s room. She hesitated at the threshold. Sun angled through half‑shuttered slats, turning drifting dust into gold confetti. His bed was unmade, blankets twisted as though he’d left in haste. Urgency hummed in the air like a plucked string.
As if possessed, she knelt, ransacking the chest at the foot of the bed—folded shirts, spare boots, a wood‑carved whistle still rough with knife marks. Nothing. Determined, she tapped floorboards until one sounded hollow. A forceful tug pried it free, revealing a dark pocket beneath.
A lacquered small walnut box glimmered in the gloom. Her pulse hammered as she lifted the lid. Nestled on pale linen lay an emerald pendant, the very necklace Gaellan had mentioned the night before. Seeing it stole her breath. Levine had hidden it well—hidden her past from her. A flutter of recognition stirred, bright and bittersweet. She brushed the gem; warmth tingled through her fingers. It belonged to her the way her heartbeat did, undeniable and intimate. She slipped it into her pocket, replaced the board, and hurried back to her room.
Before the mirror, she drew the chain of gold and platinum links over her head. Cool metal kissed the nape of her neck; the emerald settled at her collarbones, heavy as memory. A voice, bright and frantic, bloomed in her mind, “Mother!”
One desperate word, ringing like a bell struck inside her skull, layered with terror and fierce hope. She staggered back with emotion, only just able to catch herself. This was no echo of the past but a living summons—someone, young and frightened, reaching for her through an unseen tether. She pressed both palms to the stone. It pulsed once, twice, tugging her toward the forest where she had collected a bounty the day before.
Panic and purpose collided. If Gaellan and Levine were gone, had they felt the pull too? She forced her limbs into motion. Clothes flew from pegs: her roughest trousers, new boots, the forest‑green cloak Grena had gifted her. The young girl belted a knife at her hip, more for reassurance than for fighting, and barreled downstairs, each footfall echoing like drum beats in the hollow house.
The latch lifted; she burst onto the porch, breath catching at what met her eyes. Smoke feathered the sky above distant tree‑tops, turning the morning sun a sickly orange. Villagers hurried along the lane, shepherding children toward wagons, loading sacks of grain and battered heirlooms. Their faces carried the stunned look of people upended too early and asked to flee.
Arnell the smith came pounding up the road, soot masking his broad face, hammer still tucked in his apron. “Mina! You must head away with the others—now!”
“Where are Levine and Gaellan?” she demanded, though dread already whispered the answer.
“Deep in the forest,” Arnell rasped, shaking his head. “Adventurers from Meridian reached us before dawn—six of the Silvers, one of the Gold ranks. Gaellan took command when they saw the serpent’s trail. He and Levine went with them to hold the beast and buy us time. They have his sword and plenty of steel besides, but…” His voice cracked like cooling iron. “The creature’s bigger than the stories say. We felt its passage under our feet.”
As if summoned, somewhere in the direction of the wild woods, trees splintered with a muffled boom. The voice in Mina’s head wailed again, “Mother, please!” stronger, closer to panic. Every heartbeat drummed against the emerald, urging her onward.
Arnell seized her wrist. “No, lass. They left word: you’re to travel with the evacuees—”
“I can’t.” Her reply was quiet steel. Something vast uncoiled in her blood, a power awakening. She twisted; Arnell’s fingers slipped as though she were made of smoke. He tried to bar her path; she set a firm hand to his chest and pushed. The giant of a man flew back, eyes wide.
“I have to reach them,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head
He looked at her, eyes pleading. “Mina—wait! You don’t know…”
But she was already running, cloak snapping behind her like a banner in rising wind. Boots pounded the packed earth; the world blurred—abandoned carts, toppled crates, dogs barking in confusion. Fleeing villagers shouted warnings and pleas, but she streaked past, a green‑cloaked arrow aimed at the forest’s heart.
Memory and instinct sharpened into one razor edge. She vaulted a fallen fence, skirted a spooked ox, and hit the tree line without breaking stride. The forest swallowed her, trunks rising like pillars of an ancient hall. Light dappled the path in flickering coins; her cloak swished through ferns, scattering dew.
Each bound carried her nearer the invisible thread throbbing from the emerald. She pictured Gaellan’s weathered face set in grim determination, Levine’s broad shoulders squared against fear, gold‑rank adventurers fanning around them with shields locked and spears outthrust. Branches clashed above, echoing sword‑on‑scale. She imagined the serpent—plates overlapping like cathedral roofs, eyes like twin furnaces, rearing amid shattered and broken trees. The thought should have frozen her; instead, it lent speed to her limbs.
Roots and rocks seemed to move aside, as though the forest itself guided her steps. Deeper, always deeper, the pull insisted. The voice in her mind quieted to a tremulous whimper, sensing her swift approach.
A new sound broke through—the clash of metal, the roar of some colossal throat, men shouting orders. She crested a low ridge and glimpsed flashes of steel through the undergrowth.
Mina crested the ridge just as the forest ahead erupted in white fire, its glare washing out the dawn. A clearing yawned beneath her—trees ripped out by the roots, crowns hurled sky‑high, trunks sizzling and collapsing where rivers of acid hissed through bark.
At its center writhed a colossal, three‑headed serpent: a hydra of night‑tale proportions, each neck as thick as an ancient oak, every slick scale the color of untouched snow with just a hint of pink at the edges. One head loosed a jet of caustic spittle, dissolving a pine to bubbling ruin; another swung wide, felling two sycamores in a single scything sweep. Its third maw rumbled with a bass growl that rattled needles from treetops.
Ringed around the monster fought nine adventurers—now eight, now seven as the beast’s tail lashed. They were a ragged band of would‑be heroes: a Knight in burnished plate, throwing up radiant wards that cracked each time a tail slammed; a lightly armored Rogue vanishing and reappearing in knife flashes that barely nicked alabaster scales; a red‑robed mage hurling orbs of crimson flame that burst against the hydra’s hide like dying suns. Icebolts, lightning lances, crescent arcs of conjured wind—spellwork painted the clearing in flashes of raw magic.
The ground steamed where frost collided with fire; ozone and sap stung the air. For every wound they carved, the gouge of a broadsword, the impact burn of a fireball—the hydra’s flesh slowly knitted, filaments of its pink crystal magic stitching alabaster skin whole again.
Mina’s breath hitched as the voice in her mind blazed, “Mother!”