Control your emotions. Think. Use your greatest strength—your mind.
The thought anchored me. Those words, wherever they came from, gave me strength. I took a deep breath and forced myself to think through the details.
This was the correct location on the map. I was certain this was the spot of my second trial. The voice luring me out wasn’t imagined. I knew that in my bones. It was the Siren. No one was inside my head. And I was immune to mental magic, another fact.
This had to be the test.
A cruel one. One I didn’t yet understand. A trial I didn’t know how to defend myself against, with the sky itself turned into a weapon. But this was my second trial. If I didn’t leave the shelter of this trunk as the Siren demanded, I would never retrieve the gem. I would fail the Dragontail trials and the island.
I stood, my gaze ahead, and I took a step into the rain.
Each step towards the meadow hurt more than the last. Pain tore through my body raw and relentless, stealing my breath and blurring my thoughts. Still, I forced myself forward, eyes fixed ahead through the curtain of rain.
“I’m here,” I screamed into the storm. “What do you want from me?” No answer came. The rain fell just as hard.
“Please, make it stop,” I cried, collapsing to my knees. I pressed my face into the mud, trying to shield it from the burning drops.
The Siren didn’t respond.
This was a trap. Someone had lured me out here to die. And I was going to die. I was sure of it.
I screamed again, pain ripping through me, and with whatever strength I had left, I wielded magic to create a dome around myself, even knowing the fire would be extinguished within seconds by the rain.
Fewer drops struck me now; I was sure of it. But the pain remained everywhere.
I didn’t look up. My hands dug into the mud beneath me, my screams filling the fragile dome I’d created.
Then I felt it, and I heard it.
The wind was howling above me.
It tore through the meadow in a violent burst, ripping the rain from the sky itself. I dared to look up, twisting to face the horizon. My fire dome was gone. Air surged outward, forcing the rain and clouds south, deep into the forest.
Silence slammed down.
I lay there staring up at a clearing blue sky, rainwater dripping from my hair, my clothes plastered to my skin. The pain ebbed slowly, leaving behind a deep and heavy exhaustion.
My vision blurred. The world tilted.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms gave out. Darkness closed in, and I fainted.
Chapter 36: The Unexpected
Iwoke with a sharp breath, staring up at the clear blue sky above me. The sun was high, it had to be past noon. I blinked, disoriented. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The meadow stretched around me, quiet now, the grass flattened where I had collapsed.
I sat up, expecting pain to tear through me but it didn’t.
Slowly, I looked down at my hands. There were no burns. My gaze drifted to the rest of my body, my arms, my legs, my stomach. There were no burns, no blisters, no raw, melted flesh where the acid rain should have destroyed me. The fabric of my green uniform was damaged, eaten through in places where the acid had fallen, but my skin beneath it was smooth.
I looked again at my hands and noticed my ring. The blue sapphire was set into the metal.
I stared at it, my breath shallow, my thoughts scrambling to catch up with reality. I hadn’t imagined it.
This had been a test. It had been my second trial and somehow, I had passed it.
Mid-afternoon lights filtered through the trees. Birds lifted suddenly into the air in a frantic wave, their cries sharp and distant, as if something unseen had disturbed them deeper in the forest. Far away, I could hear the roar of the crowd, muffled echoes carried on the wind from the direction of the nearby arena.
I pulled the map from my pocket, shaking, and unfolded it. The third mark had appeared.