Dark Mage (Avalon: Web of Magic, Book 11) (10 page)

“I
T’S HORRIBLE!” THE
kobold leader wailed, shielding his watering red eyes from the bright sunlight.

They stood in a verdant valley filled with huge flowers, babbling brooks, and trees laden with ripe fruit. Snowcapped mountains surged to the skies, protectively encircling the pristine vale. The air sparkled, warmed by the dazzling sun.

But Emily knew something was wrong. Magic sparked through her jewel, itching like sandpaper against her wrist.

The rest of the kobolds cowered, desperately seeking shade beneath fragrant peach and apricot trees. “Fix it, hurry!” they implored.

“Emily, what are they talking about?” Lorren inhaled the sweet air.

The healer studied the kobolds and frowned. Each creature adapted to its natural environment. The kobolds should be living somewhere darker and colder. “This environment is totally wrong for them,” she explained. “The sun is way too bright for their large eyes, and their thick fur is too heavy for this warm climate.”

“Are you sure this is your home?” Ozzie asked the kobold. “Maybe you got lost.”

“We know our home when we don’t see it!” the creature wailed.

“Ozzie,” Emily murmured, raising her rainbow jewel. “Give me a boost.”

The ferret’s orange gem sparkled as he hopped to her side.

Gingerly reaching out with her magic, Emily focused on a patch of bright purple daisies, watching intently as a halo of light blossomed. Plants had magical auras too, more subtle than magical animals, but visible to Emily’s heightened vision. The daisies, with their large smooth petals and strong stems, appeared perfectly healthy. But when Emily looked deeper, she saw the truth: The flowers’ aura was a jumble of red and blue, like two different colored ribbons tangled together in a knot. Instinctively, Emily sensed the blue magic was the daisy’s true magical aura. The red magic was eating away at it like a virus. Emily shuddered. She’d seen this before, when the water magic of Aldenmor had made the sea dragons sick.

Widening her magical vision only confirmed her fears. This strange red magic polluted the land, twisting the natural blue aura out of shape.

“Ouch.” Ozzie winced, feeling the healer’s shock.

Emily whispered, “This whole place hurts.”

“You mean the land is sick?” Lorren asked.

Emily nodded grimly. “Yes. It isn’t supposed to look like this.”

Once, she had felt the pain of Ravenswood when the forest spirit was corrupted. But here the land itself hurt.

Lorren’s mouth was tight with concern. “The only magic I know that could do that is a power crystal.”

Emily agreed. “We need to find it before it does more damage.”

“Please help us, great weaver of magic,” the kobolds wailed.

“You can actually heal the land?” Lorren’s eyes went wide.

“No way! This isn’t like healing an animal,” Ozzie exclaimed. “You can’t risk something like this on your own.”

Ozzie was right. This was new territory. The only way to heal this land was to reweave its magic back into its original pattern. She would have to amplify her magic through a web of animals, as she had done on Aldenmor. But her new powers had hurt so many. This could be even riskier.

But what choice did she have? The kobolds, huddled in a miserable clump, were suffering. She was a healer and these creatures needed her help. “I have to try.”

“You sure about this?” Ozzie’s brown eyes were wide with worry.

Know this, healer. Your power for weaving magic surpasses even hers.

The words of the Dark Sorceress echoed in her mind. Ozzie was right to be concerned.

But Emily was not the Spider Witch. And if her Level Two powers enabled her to heal in this new way, she had to take the next step.

Deep down Emily already knew she could do it.

She spread her arms wide. “Ready?”

Without waiting for Ozzie’s response, the healer enveloped the clump of daisies with a wave of glowing colors. Instantly her jewel flashed dark as magic prickled along her skin. Taking a deep breath, she wrapped her power around the voracious red threads. Her fingers moved through air as she gently tugged at the red, trying to unravel it. To her surprise, it came loose easily. A loop of red magic separated from the daisies’ blue auras and floated before her eyes. And she was doing this with only Ozzie’s magic to support her.

“It’s working!” Ozzie gasped.

The daisies began shimmering, changing. With bright sparks their purple petals melted into sharp red spikes, and the green stems twisted to woody brown.

“The bugbear pod!” the kobolds cried happily.

“I don’t believe it!” Lorren said, stunned.

Emily barely heard him. Encouraged, she expanded her healing web over the lush valley floor. She tugged at the red magic, her fingers moving faster as she tore it loose, allowing the blue pattern to regain its original shape.

The mountain peaks wavered and changed, their bright colors sliding off like melting snow. Fruit trees groaned as their bark shifted back into thorny branches; the whisper of the rushing stream silenced, becoming the ominous quiet of a dense bog. Mist seeped over the craggy land like a dank cloak, chilling her to the bone.

She was vaguely aware of Ozzie, Lorren, and the kobolds gasping in awe as she wove away the red magic faster and faster. It was working. Everything was turning back to the way it was supposed to be. The original blue pattern shimmered across the valley, strong, renewed, and healthy once more.

She felt Ozzie using his magic to gently slow hers down, but Emily didn’t want to stop. She dove deeper, spiraling to the very core of the land.

In a brilliant flash, she found coils of silver lacing beneath the land like pipelines—the magic web itself, feeding magic into the vale. The web’s dazzling auras danced before her enhanced vision. It was the most incredible thing she’d seen yet, almost too much to take in.

A thread of the red magic caught her eye, trailing away far into the distance. Emily’s heart thudded with excitement. It was still connected to the source!

Pushing the limits of her power, Emily widened her magical vision even further, following the thread. Sure enough, it led to a gleaming crystal, floating like a sparkling vision on the magic web. The power crystal.

She pushed forward, but the closer she got, the farther away the crystal seemed to go, just out of reach, as if something were constantly pulling it from her grasp. With a mighty effort, Emily flung her magic toward the crystal—and came to a screeching halt.

The kobold’s section of web abruptly ended, trailing off into an immense black chasm.

She gasped at this startling discovery. The kobolds’ home was not connected to the rest of the web!

She could not follow the power crystal without creating some kind of bridge to link the two sections of web. The power crystal must have isolated the kobolds’ home. Why else would this land be completely cut off? She was going to need more than Ozzie’s magical back-up to weave the two sections of web together.

Instinctively, Emily summoned more magic, reaching out to any animal that could hear her.

Power rushed through her, swift and sharp, as animal strength amplified her magic. But this magic looked nothing like the bright auras of the Ravenswood animals. It was dark, shadowy, reaching out for her with predatory hunger. She didn’t have time to be afraid as her web blossomed into a giant network. Auras blinked so fast she couldn’t tell exactly who had answered her call, only that enough of them had.

Her vision rocketed across the silvery magic web. She didn’t think about how to weave this magic. She just did, her Level Two powers filling her with confidence. She was actually healing the web, her fears melting away as bright magic flew from her fingers.

Weaving the animals’ magic into a bright thread, she looped it through the two edges of the severed web. In a few moments the kobolds’ home was attached to the rest of the magic web. With a final tug, she pulled tight, knotting the sections of web together.

Suddenly bright spikes of magic flared across the web like a tidal wave.

Beneath her feet, the land rippled with a powerful earthquake.

Her eyes flew open. The beautiful trees and flowers had completely disappeared, revealing an ugly, dank land. Craggy volcanic mountains belched foul smoke into the gray skies. Icy rain drizzled onto thorny trees with wicked orange spikes and shriveled fruit.

The kobolds danced with joy. “Great witch, you have performed a miracle!”

Lorren regarded Emily with complete awe. “How did you do this?”

“I just could,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Emily!” Tweek’s voice suddenly exploded in her ear.

Fiona was sitting on her shoulder.

“Something’s happened!” Tweek’s voice blared from the d-fly. “The web is in total chaos!”

But Emily was too busy looking at this rewoven landscape. Dark monoliths loomed above her, glistening like black ice. Something about this place was strangely familiar.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Our home.” The kobolds grinned. “The Otherworlds!”

“We have a situation!” Tweek shouted. “Hello, is this thing on?”

Lorren shook his head. “The Otherworlds aren’t even connected to the web, we couldn’t possibly be there.”

Ice ran through Emily’s veins. The Otherworlds! That’s where she had seen this place before, in terrible nightmares sent by the Dark Sorceress. It was a prison to unimaginably dark creatures. And she had just connected this awful place to the rest of the magic web!

Little Fiona hopped from foot to foot as Tweek screamed. “The Spider Witch’s web just expanded! And you’re right in the middle of it!”

Emily’s stomach knotted with fear. What had she done? Frantically she tried to find the power crystal again. Maybe its magic would help her fix this terrible mistake.

Red lightning spiked through her jewel with a jolt. That was no power crystal. A mass of creatures, fierce and greedy, had latched onto her magic. And they knew exactly where she was.

“We have to get out of here,” she said through clenched teeth.

“The Spider Witch wanted the Otherworlds attached to her web.” Lorren stared at the healer.

A bloodcurdling yowl pierced the air.

“What was that?” Ozzie asked, hair frizzed on end.

“Now.” Emily gasped as more and more dark creatures attached themselves to her magic.

Sleek bodies with yellow eyes moved like ghosts through the mist.

The glint of cold steel flashed as Lorren unsheathed his sword.

“Shadow cats!” The kobolds turned tail and fled, vanishing into murky caves along the mountain walls. “Hurry, take shelter with us!”

Another unearthly shriek rang out, and then another, and another.

Lorren turned toward Emily, his face pale. “We need a portal.”

Saber tooth fangs and spiked tails wavered in and out of sight. As suddenly as they appeared, they vanished, leaving only glinting snarls like nightmarish Cheshire cats.

Ozzie scrambled onto Emily’s shoulder and throttled little Fiona. “Find us a portal!”

Emily reeled as the shadow creatures swirled around her, ripping away shreds of her bright aura.

Lorren was at her side. “Can you run?”

“I… think so.” She tired to push wet curls from her face but she was so weak.

“Lean on me.” The goblin prince draped her arm over his shoulders.

“Twigman!” Ozzie shouted.

“There are several portals directly south. They’re moving fast so—”

“Run!”

Emily and Loren bolted, Ozzie falling headfirst into her backpack.

The goblin prince guided Emily quickly through the moor, veering right and left along a trail only he could make out.

She glanced over her shoulder, heart skipping a beat as she saw dozens of black smudges in the mist. They seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“Which way?” Lorren yelled.

“Left!” They heard Tweek scream as Fiona swooped overhead, jeweled eyes whirling in distress. “Right!”

Emily dodged under a spiky tree, staggering back as a sharp thorn ripped her denim jacket.

Yellow eyes and glowing fangs leaped straight at them.

Ozzie poked his head from the pack. “Ahhh!”

Lorren’s sword sliced through thin air as the swift beast soared overhead and vanished.

“Straight ahead!” Tweek guided frantically. “Wait, bear right, right!”

Slipping on the slick rocky ground, Emily and Lorren sprinted, barely thinking as they leaped over a muddy stream. She landed shin deep in slimy water, losing precious seconds as she slogged forward, breathing hard.

“Well?” Ozzie grabbed the red dragonfly.

“I’m triangulating,” Tweek advised.

“I’m gonna triangle all over your head!” Ozzie yelled, squashing Fiona into the pack.

“There it is!” Lorren pointed to a glowing blue doorway drifting along a foggy ravine.

“The portal’s moving,” Tweek cried. “Hurry!”

“Go!” Lorren pushed Emily forward as he turned to fend off their pursuers.

Emily struggled through tangled growth, desperately fighting off the crushing attacks. Blackness swirled around her in suffocating waves as her magic was torn away.

“ROARRRRRRR!” A deafening bellow boomed through the air, sucking the breath from Emily’s lungs.