Chapter 12: Back Home
The first arrow snapped against an invisible shield six inches from Lyra’s face. She didn’t even look up from the shimmering patch of luminescent moss she was studying, nestled in the roots of an ancient oak.
“Really, boys?” she sighed, her voice a ripple of amusement in the forest gloom. “An ambush? In my woods?”
Four more arrows zipped from different directions. One veered off to thud into a rotten log. Two others looped back on themselves, their fletching brushing the helmets of the archers who’d fired them. The last dissolved into a flutter of harmless ash.
Lyra finally stood, brushing damp leaf litter from her bare knees. Five figures in the steel-and-silver plate of the Dawnward Order stepped from behind trees, their swords drawn, faces hard beneath their helms. Young, all of them. Zealous. Stupid.
“By the order of the High Justiciar, Lyra Nightshade, you are charged with necromancy, blight-casting, and the corruption of a sworn paladin,” the leader, a broad-shouldered man with a scarred chin, intoned. “Submit for judgment.”
Lyra’s emerald eyes sparkled. “Corruption, is it? And which paladin would that be?” She already knew. The thought of Aurora sent a warm, private thrill through her, quickly subsumed by a flicker of protective annoyance. These oafs were trespassing.
“Aurora Valerius,” the leader spat. “You twisted her with your filthy arts.”
“Twisted her?” Lyra laughed, a sound like chimes in a breeze. “I seem to recall her begging quite beautifully. But fine. You want to play?”
She didn’t cast a spell. She simply willed it. The soft, green fabric of her robe dissolved into motes of light that winked out, leaving her standing utterly naked in a dappled shaft of sunlight. Her skin was pale as moonlight, her body a curve of slender strength and generous hips, the fire of her pubic hair a shocking declaration. The five paladins froze, a comedic tableau of lethal intent derailed by primal surprise. Swords wavered. One man audibly gulped.
“See something you like?” Lyra purred, turning slowly, letting them see the full, unashamed display. It wasn’t seduction. It was artillery. Their discipline, already brittle, shattered.
The leader roared to break the spell, charging. Lyra flicked a finger. A root erupted from the soil, coiling around his ankle and yanking him off his feet. He slammed into the earth, his breath exploding in a whoosh.
The second paladin came in low. Lyra sidestepped, and a dangling vine thickened, hardening into a green fist that punched him squarely in the chestplate. The metallic clang echoed, and he staggered back, wheezing.
The third and fourth came together. Lyra clapped her hands. The moss beneath their feet erupted into a cloud of iridescent spores. They stumbled, coughing, eyes streaming, swords waving blindly. She danced between them, plucking their blades from their hands with subtle telekinetic tugs. The swords floated gently up to nestle in the high branches of the oak.
The last paladin, the youngest, tried to circle behind her. Lyra didn’t even turn. She willed the very shadows at the base of a yew tree to elongate, wrapping around his legs like cold tar. He stumbled, pinwheeled his arms, and fell with a crash.
It was over in twenty seconds.
Lyra stood amidst their groaning, disarmed forms, utterly unconcerned by her nudity. She walked over to the leader, who was trying to wrestle the animated root from his ankle. She planted a bare foot on his chestplate, holding him down. “You know,” she said conversationally, “Aurora would have sensed the root. She’d have cleaved the vine. She’d have held her breath against the spores. Not one of you is even close to her skill level. It’s almost embarrassing.”
From above, a strained voice chimed in. The youngest paladin was dangling upside down, his ankle snared in a suddenly noose-like loop of the same vine that had disarmed his friend. His face was crimson with inverted blood and humiliation. “Skill didn’t save her,” he grunted.
Lyra’s playful demeanor vanished. The air around her seemed to still and cool. She looked up, her green eyes now sharp as broken glass. “What did you say?”
The dangling paladin, emboldened by fear and inverted dizziness, blurted it out. “She’s missing. Went on a solo mission to the Blackridge five days ago. Never reported back. No signal flares. Nothing. The Justiciar thinks you… lured her away.”
The words hit Lyra like a physical blow. The warmth of the sun vanished. The playful light in her eyes died, replaced by a cold, calculating fury. Aurora hadn’t returned to the Order. She hadn’t chosen to leave. She was missing. In Blackridge. Where the obsidian tower of that cold witch, Malcorra, stood like a rotten tooth.
“Five days,” Lyra whispered, the words lethal soft. Her mind raced, stitching together rumors: the whispers of a necromancer gathering power, the decay creeping into the eastern woods, Aurora’s fierce, foolish nobility that would send her charging headlong into such a place.
She removed her foot from the leader’s chest. With a thought, the roots and vines retracted, the shadows receded, the moss ceased its glittering. The paladins stumbled to their feet, retrieving their weapons from the dirt and the trees, confused and chastened.
Lyra’s robe shimmered back into existence around her, covering her form. But the woman inside was transformed. The playful sorceress was gone, locked away beneath a layer of glacial purpose.
“Get out of my forest,” she said, her voice devoid of all its previous music. It was flat. Final. “Tell your Justiciar his pawns are returned to him. And that if he sends anyone else after me before I find her, I won’t be nearly so gentle.”
She didn’t wait to see them go. She was already moving, bare feet silent on the path, heading not deeper into the woods she loved, but east, towards the bleak silhouette of the mountains. Towards the tower. Every protective instinct, every soft and dominant claim she held over Aurora, was now a sharp, driving spike of dread.
The forest felt her distress. The leaves rustled in a sighing chorus. The playful, earthy magic that usually trailed in her wake was now a focused, hungry pull, drawing strength from the roots and stones as she moved with terrifying speed. The game was over.