Ashlyn stepped inside the portal and activated the runes. The world around her began to spin, faster and faster until she was lost in a vortex of shapeless gray. Almost as quickly as she spun, she found herself standing still again, her feet planted on a flat surface. A smaller ring of stones enclosed her, though not as wide or grand as the one above ground. Before her now was a cavernous den, crawling with the giant roots from the Elder tree. 

From what she could tell the place was dark, drifting with a haze of black smoke. She could barely withstand to move through such a blight, had to cover her nose with her stained blue cape as she searched. 

She expected to find people down here, but all she found were objects; a table cluttered with tools and tomes, and an empty bed with broken leather straps, still warm from the body that held it. She recognized Girithane’s tools, his handiwork, but it was not the bone-covered place that rumors had led her to believe. It was a Druid’s laboratory.

“Girithane!” She called out, keeping her nose and mouth covered. Then her feet detected something that her eyes did not. She tripped over Drekaan’s body and managed to regain her balance before she could ram into a bookshelf. She knelt down, feeling the open wounds on the Druid’s belly, his slow heartbeat. 

“Hang on friend, help is here.” But as she laid a healing hand on the wolf, she felt a sturdy one clawing into her own shoulder. She gasped at the touch and looked up to see Damien with the most grotesque dark lines all over his body. His shirt had been torn away, showed bulging, swollen veins under the skin. She couldn’t recall his muscles ever being so pronounced. 

“Ah!” She jumped to her feet and put a few paces between them. Held out her arm. “It’s alright, you just startled me is all.” He stared with an unnerving, hostile look. “Damien? What has Girithane done to you?” She risked drawing closer to see if her touch would heal him, too, but he caught her hand in midair and jerked her forward. Ashlyn crashed into the desk and tumbled onto the floor, hitting her tailbone. 

The young man sauntered closer, reached down to grab her, but Ashlyn managed to roll and pushed to her feet. Damien moved quicker than she anticipated. She sensed him right behind, pulling on her cape, so Ashlyn slid free of it and darted toward the stone circle. 

Damien went in after her. His feet made it inside the ring just as she activated the portal. He growled and aimed a powerful fist at her that she dodged by ducking.

“By the Fates.” She backed up against the wall of the spinning vortex. “What’s made you so angry?” Damien grew even more agitated, beating against the sides. “No, don’t!” She gripped his arm, only for him to shake her off and make her hit the dizzy wall. “Please, tell me what’s wrong.” She tried to read him, but everything inside his head was an incoherent mess. He had the demeanor of a tortured slave, the fierce instincts of an endangered creature. This was not the Damien she knew; this was something else. 

The portal delivered them up to the surface, and Ashlyn almost tripped while crossing the threshold of the tall jutting stones. Her own pulse thrummed in her ears as she ran, calling to Lothira. 

“Help!”

Lothira saw the girl being stalked by an angry Damien and planted herself in his path. 

“You will not harm her!” she yelled. A small orb of white magic burst from her horn, staved Damien back a few paces, but the boy recovered and tore his way forward again. Lothira used her body weight to clash against him, though she did not hold for long. He rammed his fist into her gut, grabbed the center of her horn, and pulled. 

The boy's teeth and jaw clenched; Lothira squirmed to break free, and cried out when her horn snapped in two. 

“No!” Ashlyn screamed when Lothira hunched over, too bewildered to fight. Then the girl turned on Damien, fuming. “How could you? She only ever helped you!”

Damien tossed the broken piece aside and pursued Ashlyn again, so she continued running. She made it across the thin fork of the river before she felt the hem of her dress catching in his grip. A powerful hand pulled her in, wringed her throat. 

“Please.” A tear leaked from her eye. “Come back to me, Damien.”

She conjured a glowing aura around her body and was surprised by how quickly it waned. His dark eyes scowled at her, his fingers squeezed. The touch burned against her skin, scorched like molten metal down her throat. 

Ashlyn screamed but it gave off such an empty sound. Slowly her hands came up to Damien’s temples, and she gathered enough power to shock him out of his daze. All it took was one potent burst. 

Damien staggered, loosening his grip just enough for Ashlyn to pull herself free, then she knocked him back with a blast from both her palms. He recovered and came at her again, more barbaric than before. In a final, desperate tactic, Ashlyn pushed all the power she had to the tips of her fingers and cast it forward. Pure, white lightning streamed into Damien’s chest, turned his skin hot and red. 

She couldn’t stop the flow of tears now; hated every second while it lasted. She ceased when he faltered to his knees, hunched on all fours. The boy coughed in horrible, agonizing pain. Black, disgusting liquid spewed from his mouth and onto the ground, growing its own tiny tendrils. The ooze trailed along the dirt until it was small enough to lift into the air like droplets and disappear bit by bit. 

Tired, drained, Ashlyn collapsed with him. The small river ran behind her, and Damien now lay in front of her, coughing out the last bits of ooze. She sensed his soul calming, his mind filling with thought and language again. 

The boy fell onto his stomach, took in his surroundings; the forest, the river, the girl. His palm scraped down the side of his cheek. “I’m going to kill that raven man,” he swore. “Do I…look terrible?”

“You look a little better than the day I found you.” She crawled over to him, grasped his veiny, gray arm. “You should leave,” she rasped, feeling weaker with each breath, “I’ll deal with Girithane.”

“No way in hell,” he said, moving into a sit. Spitting on the ground. When he noticed the damage he did to her neck, he lowered his gaze. “I— I don’t know where to begin. I don’t want you to be scared.”

“Damien.” She cupped his jaw and turned it up. “I was never scared. Now please, go before he shows himself again.” She would have followed as Damien got to his feet, but she didn’t trust herself to stand. The burn in her throat was too excruciating. 

“Come on, Ash.” He reached down, and just as he caught her hand, he cried out at the pain of a knife slashing across his back. When he staggered forward, Girithane appeared from behind, uttering the enchanting words. 

“Girithane!” Ashlyn cut off the spell. “No more schemes! Your fellow Druids will not stand for this.”

Girithane smirked and took a step forward. “My fellow Druids know what awaits them should they confront me. Just look at your Keeper.”

“You will also answer for Drekaan.” Ashlyn glared at him through narrow eyes. The man came forward, flashed the knife in his hand, then he grunted as Damien kicked him from behind. Ashlyn reacted by shooting at Girithane with power, but his figure dissolved immediately into a puff of purple smoke. Out of the cloud came a flapping raven that darted up toward the branches. 

Damien hopped around the area, reaching and grabbing at him. “Come here you blasted bird!” 

Ashlyn lifted her arm, aimed for the moving target. The corruption choked upon her lungs, made her limbs tremble. Her scope of vision grew blurry. A white orb shot from her palm before she gave and rested on the ground. 

She heard the bird squawking as it crashed into a branch, and Damien’s triumphant cry once he caught it in midair.

“Gotcha!” Damien crushed Girithane into his grip. His black eyes bore into those molten silver beads; the bird squirmed and struggled.

“Release me!” Girithane screeched. “It burns!”

“You wanted my blood,” Damien seethed. “You’ll get it.” He looked at Ashlyn and pointed to the distance. “You need to leave,” he said, then marked the bird’s head with red droplets. 

But Ashlyn couldn’t leave. She was so weak. 

“Ash! Go!”

Misty vapor began to ooze from his open cuts, rising, turning into dark, poisonous smoke. Ashlyn covered her mouth as it grew, watched Damien clutch the raven so tightly that it choked. The raven gave one last shriek before its body became black dust and scattered to the air.

Frightened, Ashlyn pushed herself onto her knees and crawled. This place would be the death of her too if she did not try.

The smoke gathered around her as she moved, made each pace agonizing. When she reached the small riverbank, she took several drinks to help soothe her throat. A few paces off to the side, Lothira stirred, rolling into the shallow bed.

Ashlyn reached for her friend. “I can’t move…it hurts.”

Lothira waded over and submerged the girl’s body in the water. Ashlyn laid on the mossy rocks, listened to the soothing voice.

“Rest, child. The river protects you.”

“I’m not so certain of that.” She watched the dark smoke clouding the air.

“Trust in it.”

She allowed the enchanting whispers to calm her, let herself fade. She pictured Damien back there in the clearing, Drekaan wounded down in that den. If only she could have rescued one of them…

The fog drifted above her, turned the treetops into a hazy blur. Her eyes drooped, her hand reached toward the light before everything went dark. 

Damien woke late in the day, just as the sun was casting its last streaks of orange. Above him, the sky was a radiant, deep blue and the stars mocked him with their clear beauty. He sat up, wiping the fog from his mind. His memory came in bits and pieces, but he remembered enough of what had happened. The dark veins along his arms, chest, and ribs were proof of it.

"You are not welcome here." 

He flinched at a feminine voice that seemed to come from nowhere, and when he turned, he saw Lothira standing near the Elder tree. Her figure blended into its grayish bark.

“We have lost much to the Hand of Death,” she said solemnly. “Girithane, our brother, is no more. And our ward…” she turned to gaze at the barren tree that sagged behind her. Damien felt his stomach and chest clenching as the woman stepped toward him. She bent down, her brassy eyes threatening. “Do not come back here,” she warned. Sparks fizzled around the stunted point where her horn had been snapped off. Though Damien was unsure, he sensed by Lothira's hateful demeanor that he was the one who had broken it. “There will never be a place for you in our sacred Heart." The woman straightened. "Return to your Lor elves now."

Damien hung his head. But before he could pick up and leave, he had to ask, “What about Drekaan? He’s still alive down there—I think.”

“Drekaan is lost to us also. I went to his aid but…there is nothing to be done. We shall mourn him and let his body revive the roots of this tainted place. In time, it will be a strong ward once again. Until then, it will serve as a warning against such black power. All who use it will surely share our brothers' fates."

“I’m sorry.” With a heavy sense of guilt, Damien gathered himself and made his way out of the meadow. Several meters upstream, he found Ashlyn lying unconscious. Her body sat in the trickling water, sprawled over a few rocks.  Her skin was gray and scarred like his. Deep purple veins were tangled like branches along her figure, the worst of it centered toward her neck. If not for her moving chest, Damien would have thought her dead. He cursed himself for doing this. The sight of Ashlyn was too much like the foreboding picture Girithane had conjured. 

“Ash?” Damien knelt down and picked her up by cradling her head. She did not twitch or move at his touch, her dark-rimmed eyes remained closed. He pressed his forehead to hers, listened to her faint breath. Her lips, once red and full, were now the color of lavender. “Ash?” He gently shook her, hoping she would come to in his grasp. He yearned to kiss those lips, to awaken her like the man in her tale. 

His chest sank upon realizing this was not a tale. This was not the story he wanted for her. His touch had scarred her, brought her close to death. If she were to heal, she needed to be far away from him. If she were to one day be queen, there was no place for a monster at her side. 

"I'm sorry, Ash." He scooped the girl into his arms, supported her head against him, and began walking. 

"Leave her!" Lothira's anger roared from behind. "She is not yours to care for!"

"I know." Damien turned to the Druid. "But she belongs in the mortal world. Allow me to return her to it."

Lothira's eyes closed before she agreed with a subtle nod. "Go."