The Phoenix Stone

Chapter Eighteen

The door is opened before any of us can even register what's about to happen and four castle guards come in. A man who I assumed was Markiss strode in after them, a nasty expression on his face.

"W-what are you doing here?" Ailia stammered, her skin changing from white to purple and then finally to a deep shade of blue.

Markiss grinned unpleasantly. "You girls are coming with us." He turned to Efia, his grin still plastered on his flabby face. "And you, little missy, are going to be in big trouble. Very, very, very big trouble."

When we didn't move he yelled at the guards, "Move your butts! If they won't move, we'll move them! Oh, and by the way, get the princess first." He stormed from the room

The guards looked around at each other, all wondering the same thing. Finally one of them said, "Which one is Efia?"

While they'd been talking Ailia had morphed back into Efia and now even I couldn't tell who was who.

They all sighed. "We'd better take all of them then," the one who seemed to be in charge said, grabbing the nearest Efia. One of the other guards grabbed the other Efia's shoulder and the two remaining guards grabbed my shoulders and roughly nudged me out the door.

"What time is it, Ailia?" I heard Efia whisper to her double.

"Now? It's probably around nine thirty by now. Why?"

"Nine thirty??? Are you serious? We were genuinely in telly for that long?!"

"Well, where did you come from?"

"The middle of the Esmye Province."

"And how long would it take for you to travel here by foot?"

Efia glanced at me, hoping for an answer but all I could give her was a shake of my head. The guards had let go of our shoulders and were now walking behind us talking about their favourite foods and when they might be able to have a decent meal again. They had completely forgotten about us.

"Probably like a week and a half to two weeks," I said, answering for Efia. "It's almost as far as I had to come from Duskstrand and that took a little more than a week."

"Wow!" Ailia exclaimed. "That explains why it took nearly nine and a half hours for you to telly here! The time it takes depends on how far away you are and how far away the place you're tellying to is."

"And what is tellying exactly?" I asked. I had been trying to figure out what tellying was since the moment I'd experienced it.

"It's kind of like teleporting but you can actually see someone who's being tellied. It looks a bit like a cloud of smoke except that the smoke is almost completely transparent. I've heard of instances where people have actually heard people yelling from inside the void but I've never heard it happen before. Usually those people are so strong in the magic around them that they can manipulate the particles in the void that stop the sound from getting through so much that the sound can get through."

I gulped, wondering if people in the passing villages had been able to hear my disembodied screams the entire nine and a half hours of the way here.

About three minutes later we arrived at our destination: a very ornately decorated golden door that had a letter slot, a gilded doorknob, and a message that read, "DO NOT DISTURB UNLESS SOMEONE IS ABOUT TO DIE!"

I glanced at Efia, the adrenaline starting to rush through my veins once again. I could even feel the Phoenixmark start to glow and tingle slightly.