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Ellie and her father managed to rally the entire art district into forging weapons and armor that might stand a chance against the Others.
We’ve yet to test them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident in my wife’s genius, but it would have been nice if we’d had time to put them through a few trials.
Oh well.
I left my wife and daughter home in Othian. I intend for this to be the last time I do that.
As we race through the palace, Orion and I fight back to back. Summoning plant life is difficult in Naenden, where the sun licks the moisture out of the air, causing my magic to groan inside of me. Getting it to function is like prodding an adolescent to get out of bed in the morning.
Still, we manage, though we quickly find that summoning succulents takes far less effort and produces much more efficient results. Spindled plants are rather effective in fighting Others.
We’ve just cut through the central portion of the palace, ichor already staining our enameled armor, when we spot her.
She’s standing. Rather, lounging, in the middle of the palace garden, garbed in pajamas, flicking her wrist lazily as trees spring from the ground and spear through a host of attacking Others. Some trees have even sprouted high and fast enough to spear wyverns in midair.
Orion and I look at our vines, which to be honest, we were quite proud of only minutes earlier.
“Is it possible to love someone, and utterly hate them at the same time?” I ask, staring at my sister, Olwen. She yawns before snapping her fingers and producing a flytrap plant, which subsequently snaps the head off an oncoming wyvern.
“Well, it seems like she’s got the gardens covered,” says Orion, who frankly looks a tad relieved, when up above us a pair of servants scream.
He sprints for the steps, and I turn toward my estranged sister.
A mere jumps out in front of me, but I slash through it with ease. Moments later, I find myself fighting alongside my sister in the garden.
“Evander?” Olwen asks, voice dripping with what sounds less like sibling rivalry and more like simple derision. “What are you doing here?”
She prances off the bench, looking a bit like a ballerina as she does. Behind her shoots a stream of wooden arrows that pierces the beasts in the sky.
What a showoff.
I instantly regret the decision to come out here.
“Helping,” I say, sending my own thorns twisting around the neck of a mere.
Olwen allows the edges of her lips to droop at the same time her eyebrows raise. It’s the kind of expression made when someone you previously considered an imbecile does something mirroring that of someone with average intelligence.
“You’ve been practicing your magic. I told you that you might need it someday.”
“Twelve seconds,” I say, to which she raises an eyebrow.
“Twelve seconds for you to say the words ‘I told you’ in succession.”
Her eyes don’t participate in her grin. “So what? Did Father send you to die in his stead? I hear he likes that wife of yours well enough to be content to name her heir over either of us.”
My throat tightens. She doesn’t know. “Father didn’t send me. I came of my own accord.”
Olwen peers out beyond a shattered portion of the garden wall and into the desert plains, where Dwellen’s army still marches on the city. “And you took his army with you? Well, I might become his favorite one of these days, after all.”
“Father’s dead, Olwen.”
If I wasn’t watching for it, I might have missed the shock that flickers across Olwen’s otherwise bored features. “How?”
“Wyvern,” I say, not really wishing to relive the moment.
“Hm,” she says, as if told her that lip rings were now in fashion and not that our father had been slaughtered.
