(5TH BOOK OF CRYPTIC SERIES)
What would you do if you were suddenly thrust into a future you were never meant to see?
Few can answer that question and those that could would wish they wouldn't know the answers.
The world she came to see differed gre...
I was boredly leading back my father's donkey from the town next over towards our home, it was a slice of sun after midday when I finally sold all his pottery he crafted this past month and could finally head home, it was a hot day.
I had a walking stick in hand to help if needed with an obstacle or anyone that would attack me, bandits were common in Solor as the queen selected in finest of men to share her bed with instead of helping us peasants out but it has been like that for centuries since the death of the silver and purple queen's.
My father used to tell me old stories passed from mouth to mouth about them as the castle tried to limit knowledge to have control over us, my favorite is the tale of the black sun.
When I was a little girl I always wanted to be an elemental mage but I quickly learned even talking about them could be a sign of treason against the wild magic wielding Elite cast of Solor.
I sighed sadly and spun my staff in my hands, the reins of Joe, the donkey, hanging on my arm, and made a whooshing sound when I punched the air as if by some miracle a magical thing would happen but it never did.
"It is better that it didn't anyway." I said disappointed even if it was the truth, my father and mother begged on their hands and knees for days to save my life as a young child as, despite having no magical abilities, I had been born with white hair and red eyes. The Elite instantly tried to take me away to kill me, preventing any elemental from being born... What shitty things fear makes people do... Exterminating a whole cast of people because of how they were born.
My hair was not that long, it was up in a pony tail but tied up there was only a small tuft the length of a finger with even my bangs just framing my face.
I sighed again, if only my weirdness was because of magic, mother says it is a disease of sorts running in her family, draining one's body from color which leaves the hair white and eyes red from the blood but she wouldn't say more, saying I was still too young to know the truth even tho I had just turned twenty.
I huffed angrily this time, Joe kicking up mud all over my dark green pants.
"It cost three gold to buy this stupid animal!" I huffed and he huffed back in a donkey way as I bent down to rub it off as much as I could, not worrying for my worn leather boots, they'd be dirty most of the time anyway.
My white undershirt long turned a greyish brown mixed with green throughout the years of labor to try to bring in money to help my family, over it I wore a relatively expensive sleeveless coat vest I earned from working as a delivery girl for a tailor for two years straight, it is really nothing much but for me? Oh it is worth gold if I could sell it to someone but no one would want it since it is used.
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(This thing, idk the name really.)
I heard a scream that made me jump, thinking it was a call to attack as I lifted my hands with the staff.
But nothing came.
I soon realized it was probably someone being hurt and not a combat scream, it sounded too real and painful to be that.
"Stay here." I tied the reins loosely to a low branch of a tree and jogged off towards the sound which soon died off.
I approached the edge of the forest slowly, this part of the road home passed near the cold desert, a place filled with evil, monsters rising from its sands and dust... Or at least that's what the myths said.
I got closer slowly and forgot all my apprehension as it was replaced with awe.
One of the stone statues surrounding it, said to be a spell cast to contain the desert, was seemingly in chunks and pieces on the ground and in the middle of the debris laid a woman.
What fascinated me the most about these statues was how did a spell ever craft so many different people and give them the look of having been alive... But if that was the case how was one of them now a person? Were they all actually people turned to stone?!
I jumped back when she gasped and coughed before approaching again when she didn't move, poking the woman with the end of my staff but got no reaction from her.... She seems sick almost...
I poked her again before I grabbed a tuft of hair with a trembling hand, fearing she'd move and kill me, admiring the deep dark green of it, this is not natural..... It's....
The moment the realization came I knew I couldn't leave her here, I needed to help.
I discarded my staff, it was just a somewhat straight branch anyway I can make a new one anytime and even a better one.
I picked her up somewhat easily, the stone still stuck to parts of her body was what gave a heavier weight and it was mostly in her hair.
I had my arms under her armpits and dragged her to Joe, leaving two marks in the soft soil as her boots drug through it and pushed her on Joe which took longer then I thought, almost making her fall off once before she was secured well enough.
"Come on Joe, we need to get home now." I said, looking at the woman's face one last time and pulling on the reins.
