Oracle (Book I)

The Golden Apple

The darkness around Caprice shattered. A chaos of sound and motion arrived complete with snarling, fangs, and claws.

Screaming, Caprice fell to the ground, throwing her arms over her head as the beast crashed down, its maw wide open.

"Repel!" Nezzle shouted.

Caprice dared to look between her arms in time to see the beast fly backwards away from her.

Standing in front of her, Nezzle held clasped in one outstretched hand a lustrous green apple in one hand and a wand in the other. Bossa was with her, holding a red apple of the same enchanted sheen.

"Don't worry. We've got your back," Bossa said over her shoulder.

"Go for the apple, Preece. Any apple you see."

"I'm supposed to find an apple in all this," Caprice balked.

The beast rose from the ground for another attack. "Don't move," Nezzle commanded, jabbing her wand at it. It froze, one huge monstrously clawed paw raised, and didn't move again. "It eats magic so that won't hold it."

Bossa gave Caprice a hand up. "We're going to cut you a swath across the field. All you have to do is find the apple."

Nodding, Caprice took a deep breath, closed her eyes albeit hesitantly, and tried to filter out all motion and noise. Summoning that sensation inside her from when she'd moved the sugar dish without a wand, she invoked the simple spell her mother had taught her to find lost and sought things. An apple...an apple I seek.... Caprice opened her eyes and smiled, gaze locking on the huge branching tree in the furthest corner of the field that flourished in green, bright red, and brown foliage.

Apples still grow on trees, yeah?

"Do you see it?" Bossa asked as she batted a few screechers with her bare hand, sending each of them flying away in the opposite direction.

Caprice shook her head. With the arm concealing Nezzle's wand, she pointed across the field and started walking. "But I think I know where it is. That tree there."

Dark green grass suddenly sprouted beneath her feet. She heard thunder. Hedges shot up on either side of her.

"No you don't." Spinning in front of Caprice, Nezzle slammed her arms out at her sides, punching out a powerful sans incantatem dispell. The path wilted away and the hedges vanished, taking the sound of thunder and the scent of rain clouds with it. "It was the path to a labyrinth. If you get trapped in it, we can't help you there."

"Go straight there. Don't get roped into any of the other challenges," Bossa told her.

Caprice took off but was intercepted by virulent white creepers rooted to a white tree. At first, the two appeared to be the same plant until she saw the tree's trunk twisting in the grip of the vines. She stumbled away. Trepadora and muskwood. Both very poisonous. She could keep moving left towards her goal but there was no telling what the tree or the vines would do.

"Go, Preece, we've got it!"

Bossa was locking eyes and circling with scaly brown hump-nosed drake the size of a pony and Nezzle was soaring high over her head gracefully riding an arching rainbow, full of shifting books, casting a fury of spells that shrank the flailing trepadora back around the captive muskwood.

The Announcer's voice emanated from the ceiling crystals.

"Danielle Quicksilver obtains the Fairy's Thimble."

Cheering and whistling broke out. Caprice ran faster and faster toward the tree. The announcements continued.

"Avin Taymore obtains the Sun's Arrowhead... Alastair Whitehare obtains the Hand of Glory...Po Clove obtains the Looking Glass... Grent Sykes obtains the Pilfer Flask... North Wesson obtains the Crimson Dirk...."