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This was truly a wasteland.
“I don’t like it here,” Kyan said. “I think that wench from the inn was wrong. This isn’t a place of great elemental magic, this is a forgotten place of emptiness and death.”
Yes, she felt that too, but there was something about that emptiness, that stillness and lack of life, that compelled her as much as it concerned her.
Paelsia had wasted away over the generations, had become barren, dry, no longer able to sustain life at a prosperous rate. Some people said it was a cursed land—the same people who claimed that Limeros, too, was cursed, with its seemingly endless snow and ice. But Lucia knew the truth, that these extreme environmental shifts were due to the missing Kindred.
The Kindred made life itself possible. She didn’t understand exactly how they did this, especially now that she knew Kyan had been released from his crystal in the form of a young man who’d become part of her new family. But he wasn’t just an extraordinary young man; he was fire elementia. Pure fire elementia that could speak, breathe, eat, hate, need, love, and hope. And his Kindred siblings were just like him. Earth magic, air magic, water magic—all real, living beings, trapped inside their crystal cages.
Without these four exceptional siblings, there would be no life.
The entire world would be just as it was here in the Forbidden Mountains.
They’d only been exploring for a short time, but this stark environment had already begun to affect her mood. When they first trekked into the mountain range, she’d felt optimistic, so sure they were on the brink of finding the answers they sought, so ready to help Kyan gain his ultimate freedom and vanquish the immortal trying to control his fate.
But now, completely surrounded by dark, jagged mountains, with no flat land or villages in sight, all she felt was sad and tired and very alone.
She rested her hand against her flat belly. If this barren bleakness were to spread further out into Mytica, vanquishing all the life it touched, her child wouldn’t have a future.
Death would be all that awaited the living being within her.
Luckily, one of the Kindred had been awakened. Soon, his siblings would join him and walk the earth. It was only a matter of time before the balance that had been lost over the last millennium would be restored.
The sun began to set and, with the growing darkness, it became much cooler. She didn’t relish spending the night in this place. She and Kyan conjured torchlike flames as they walked, to light their way but also to reassure themselves that their magic remained strong. Sera had mentioned that witches and exiled Watchers couldn’t access their elementia here, but that didn’t seem to be the case for a sorceress and a god.
Perhaps the Guardians—the name Lucia had adopted for the black mountains surrounding them, watching them—had the power to drain Watcher magic, just as Lucia had drained Melenia’s.
“Lucia,” Kyan said after a time. “I suddenly have a very good feeling that we’ve finally arrived exactly where we need to be.”
They’d come upon a small valley of black rock and dirt, at the center of which lay what looked like a garden.
They rushed over to the garden, which had a circumference of perhaps thirty paces. Soft green grass, colorful daisies and roses, olive trees. In the center of the garden was a large moss-covered rock as tall and wide as two of the stone wheels they’d previously found stacked atop each other.
Lucia gasped, taking in this small patch of beauty. “Do you feel anything?” Lucia asked. “Any magic?”
“No,” Kyan said, “but I do feel life here.” He walked around the circumference of the rock, sliding his hand along the moss. “There has to be some sort of force at work to sustain this isolated oasis.”
Lucia’s melancholy had been chased away by this patch of life, flourishing in the midst of so much death. “Perhaps this is what made people believe that the Watchers lived in the mountains.”
He nodded in agreement. “The Watchers managed to keep this secret very well. But why would they do that?”
She wracked her mind, but came up blank. “I have no idea.”
In one blinding instant, a flood of fire poured down his arms. “Stand back, little sorceress.”
Lucia started. “What are you going to do?”
“Watch and see.” Kyan’s eyes turned bright blue.
Before she could say another word, he turned to the moss-covered rock, flung the flames toward it, and wrapped his fire magic around it. The moss burned away in an instant; the grass surrounding the rock turned black. Deeply dismayed, Lucia watched the swift destruction of this beautiful place, but held her tongue.
Kyan’s amber fire turned to blue, and then to a bright, blinding white.
Lucia had never seen this white fire before, but she quickly learned that it was scorching enough to transform solid rock into bubbling lava in seconds. The rock melted like an ice sculpture on a summer’s day.
Kyan snuffed his fire out. The lava glowed like an orange moat protecting a strange object now revealed beneath the rock.
Lucia craned her neck to look, expecting to see another stone wheel. Instead, she saw a jagged crystal monolith—light violet at the top fading into a darker shade of purple at the bottom.
