CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

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Today's the day I die

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Today's the day I die.

And there's no way out this time.

Grief merges with all my pain, and I sob harder.

Lightning bolts are shooting down all my limbs, searing my bone marrow, charring me from the inside out.

I would scream, but it's taking all my energy just to breathe.

Redwood branches are moving in the breeze above me... A web of golden light suddenly appears in the canopy, blurry through my tears.

Redwood magick.

I fly to that web in my mind, wishing I could escape my fate.

Wishing I could've had a chance to touch one of the ancient trees, to walk among them before... this.

I can sense the magick dancing through the leaves and branches. Through the trunks and roots.

The magick of the Redwoods is wild and free, flowing through the network of golden strings.

I try to grab some of it in a last-ditch effort to somehow save myself, but I can't touch it from here.

I don't know how to without physically touching the trees.

And even if I knew how... the dome is like a shield, blocking me.

Another wave of pain explodes inside me, drawing me back into myself. To this terrible room, the last place I'll ever see.

There's magick in here—it's what Dubois and the chancellor used to make their sigils.

But it feels different than it feels when I'm outside.

There's a weaker magick thrumming through the web here, and the golden strings are mostly arranged in an orderly, boxy shape. Not wild and free like they are in the forest.

My mind traces the nearest group of golden strings to see where they lead.

They're part of... a metal beam in the floor. They run beneath me, all the way to another beam hidden in the wall. Then they continue downward in straight lines, following metal all the way to ground level.

I gulp air, struggling to breathe as the Aether rips my insides to shreds.

It wants to be free, and it's going to eat through me to get out.

Death by siren would've been better.

But I can't let it go. Not yet.

I made a terrible mistake, and I won't let everyone else suffer for it.

Glowing purple light shimmers all around me.

Every cell in my body is screaming.

I hear them, a high-pitched frantic choir.

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