She stumbles through woodland, bleeding and bruised. Collapses into the mud.


    It’s only hours later, after sunset, that she realises she’s by a road. She hears hooves approaching, the sound of voices. Many voices.


    She crawls into a ditch while the soldiers pass. It’s dark. Maybe they’ll miss her. But then a voice calls out—


    *


    The monastery appeared empty. No one came to greet them or turn them away. No sign of footsteps, not even imprints in the dust. Weeds poked through the stone floor. Cobwebs lurked in every corner. The air smelled of mildew and rot.


    Still, the power called to her.


    Valerie scanned the area. The enclosed entrance hall split into four routes: a door to her left, another to her right, a corridor straight ahead and a staircase to the upper floor. Only one of those routes led to a magical source.


    She beckoned her companions forward. “This way.”


    They squinted like blind men. Avon got up first, but cautiously, his hand skimming the wall.


    “Where?” he said. “We need a light.”


    Then she remembered that he couldn’t see the sword’s light like she could. To him, they were shrouded in darkness.


    Ghen only groaned. Right, she thought. She was getting ahead of herself. Part of her wanted to go anyway, but she resisted, stopping to kneel by Ghen’s side.


    “You’re injured.”


    He snorted. “You barely healed me the first time.”


    She hesitated. His distraction might have saved their lives. But the ruse had cost him: blood dripped from his shirt, and beneath the rips, she could see the gash in his flesh. She’d advocated killing him only minutes ago. He was a loose end they didn’t need, an unknown quantity.


    “Help him,” said Avon. “It’s the least we can do.”


    Ghen acquiesced, and after a moment, so did she. She couldn’t replenish the lost blood, but she closed up his wounds, and Ghen staggered to his feet.


    “I can see the way,” she said. “Take my hand. Oh, and keep hold of the sword.”


    She extended her hand to Avon, who took it. Ghen followed at their shoulder, and in this fashion they made their way along the dim corridor.


    Avon spoke quietly. “Where are you taking us?”


    “I don’t know. But there’s something magical up ahead. I can sense it.”


    “Something dangerous?”


    “I don’t know.”


    She’d come too far to be scared. They passed several rooms along the corridor, some closed off, others open: a study, a prayer room, a dining room… All were sparsely furnished, with unadorned stone walls and floors covered in a thick layer of dust. Some light filtered through tiny porthole windows, making it easier for Avon and Ghen to follow her lead.


    “I don’t think there’s anything alive in here,” Avon observed, glancing at one of the open rooms. “Certainly nothing bigger than a rat.”


    To her surprise, Ghen spoke up. “Don’t jinx it, my lord.”


    “Jinx it?”


    “You speak like that in a place like this, you’ll make the opposite come true.”


    “Nonsense,” said Avon. “Kindly refrain from voicing baseless superstitions, and focus on what lies ahead.”


    Valerie might have contradicted him, but right now she didn’t care about their conversation. They’d reached the end of the corridor. A set of double doors blocked their way. The power she sensed was through here, she knew it. She took a breath and set her hands on the door handle. It wasn’t spelled. It wasn’t even locked.


    She twisted the handle, and the door scraped open. Foul air assaulted them, but nothing else: a horrible musty scent of death. Valerie coughed, then pressed her sleeve against her nose.


    They stepped inside, all three of them, and together they witnessed the result of whatever had happened at the monastery forty years ago.


    The room was diamond-shaped, both the walls and the ceiling, with a skylight at the diamond’s apex shining down a circle of light on a great black tomb. The lid of the tomb was half-open. The remains of hundreds of candles were scattered around the stone slabs.


    But it was the skeletons that made Valerie take a step back and choke in disgust. Corpses of men, their moth-eaten robes still clinging to their bones, their flesh long ago picked clean, lay strewn about the tomb like macabre offerings.


    Ghen made a sign on his forehead and muttered something in his own language. Avon had turned pale and grim. He approached the tomb, and with a sudden sense of foreboding, Valerie rushed after him and grabbed his arm.


    “Wait!” She swallowed. “They’re the monks, aren’t they? All of them… Dead.”


    “Dead Resurrected Monks,” said Avon. “Hardly living up to their name. You said there was something magical here.”


    “Yeah,” she said. “The tomb.”


    The stone of the tomb was different to the stone everywhere else. It was black and gleaming and rich in magical power. Like the wyvern’s claw. Like the wyverns themselves.


    “Stay back,” she added.


    She waited until both men had retreated before acting. Again, the tomb called to her, whispering its power. Trembling, Valerie approached. She half-feared that the tomb might be occupied, by what she didn’t know, but she found it empty. The lid was carved into the likeness of a man with a hooked nose. Dressed in scholarly robes, he clutched a stone book to his chest. She peered at the book. Runes were carved into its cover—a title, perhaps. Whatever language it was, she couldn’t read it.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Perhaps her magical senses would tell her more.


    She took a breath, heart thumping in excitement. Her limbs trembled; she felt almost dizzy. She reached out and touched the black stone—


    Darkness flooded her. Darkness, and a rush of power like wildfire.


    In an eye-blink, her world shifted.


    Gone was the monastery. Gone were her companions. Gone were the corpses and the candle stumps and the stench of death.


    She stood in a desert of black sand. Above her, the night sky was empty of stars. Before her, the tomb stood upright instead of horizontal, a gigantic slab planted in the ground, its lid firmly shut. Behind her, she heard the rhythmic sound of waves breaking against the shore. And around her, the wyverns flew.


    Valerie gasped at that, hastily stumbling back. The wyverns cried out to each other, their calls echoing across the vast expanse of sand. One of them plummeted towards her, and Valerie ran.


    Her feet pounded over the dunes, the shore coming ever closer. A haze of mist blurred over the water. Then the wyvern hit her like a slingshot, and she tumbled into the sand.


    She screamed, rolling over on her back with her arms raised to protect her face, and the hideous weight of the creature landed on top of her. Its claws snagged in her dress, its beak-like jaw inches from her nose. One of its talons ripped her gown, exposing bare skin. A jolt ran through her like lightning. She felt the creature’s magic, radiating from its body and into hers.


    A connection.


    She lowered her hands. The wyvern stared at her head-on like a falcon, its beady eyes black and fierce. She sensed in it a singular purpose.


    Protect the stone.


    The tomb, she thought, half-dizzy. She had touched the stone, absorbed its magic—a blessing—and this creature was made of the same stuff…


    Impulsively, Valerie reached up to caress the wyvern’s jaw. And to her surprise, her hand left a glowing imprint. The wyvern keened, flapping its wings. Its claws dug in a little harder and she winced. She snatched her hand away and saw the mark she’d left, a shimmering glyph that moved beneath the wyvern’s feathers. The inky lines resolved into a stick-like figure.


    With a sharp intake of breath, she realised what she had done.


    It’s a vessel. My vessel.


    Valerie closed her eyes, searching for the glyph. She found it, the lines pulling from the wyvern’s body to hers, opening a channel through which she could slip as easily as wishing…


    She reached through. Opened her eyes.


    And saw herself. Sprawled in the sand, dirty and bruised, her unconscious body lay warm and pulsing with power. Her claws snagged in the girl’s dress. Her wings felt heavy and ungainly on either side of her body. And what a body she now possessed—large, powerful, and with the force of a coiled spring.


    Excitement bubbled through her. She tightened her muscles and launched into the air, beating her wings. Wind whooshed past her, and with exhilarating ease, she soared into the air and joined the other wyverns in the sky. How insignificant her own body looked, down there on the ground! The flock didn’t react to her—in fact, they seemed to accept her presence—Valerie mimicking their flight paths as she tried to get her bearings.


    I’m flying. I’m really flying.


    Her wing beats propelled her through the air, her tail acting as a rudder. She practised turning and swooping and diving, delighting in the pure physical power of the wyvern’s muscle and sinew. Then she soared up, high above the rest of the flock, and looked down with her wyvern’s eyes at the world below.


    Her body looked like a mouse from here. But the landscape revealed something else more interesting: other stones. Scattered in the desert, they stuck up out of the sand dunes like great black monoliths. Yet the wyverns flew around only the stone below her. This one was special. Something—or someone—had brought these creatures to life, given them purpose. Someone had protected the now-empty tomb.


    Who had occupied that tomb? And what had the Patriarch done when he had visited the monastery all those decades ago?


    Valerie banked around, intending to return to the flock, but in so doing she faced the sea, and she found yet another thing that piqued her curiosity. The sea didn’t stretch endlessly. A distant shore was visible on the other side of the water.


    Unable to resist, she flew towards it. Mist obscured the shore, but her wyvern’s eyes were keener than her human ones. She sailed over the water, and at the top of a cliff, she made out a bright golden glow. A tall structure, like a tower or a lighthouse… Or a tree.


    That thought crossed her mind, and then she hit a wall. Her entire body crumpled. The shock of it jolted her awake. Valerie sat up in her own frail human body on the sand dunes and gasped, hand flying to her forehead. The aftershock seemed to reverberate through her.


    She had a further thought: This isn’t my body.


    No, her real body was bent over the tomb in the monastery. In this place, she took a spiritual form, and perhaps if she forgot her earthly shackles, she would be able to float in the air like the queen in their meeting by the goldentree.


    This is that other plane… The spiritual realm. The place I go when I convene with the silvertrees.


    The silvertrees existed in both realms. So did the wyverns. So did the stones. All of them sources of magic—and somehow, the barrier between them existed in both realms too.


    She would bet her life that the glowing object on that other shore was the goldentree.


    Valerie didn’t know what it meant yet. But she would find out. She looked up again at the wyverns, protecting their unknown tomb. If they didn’t perceive her as a threat here, she reasoned, they wouldn’t perceive her as a threat out there either.


    She returned to the stone, pressed her hands against it, and snapped back into the waking world. Her hands gripped the edge of the tomb. She turned around.


    Avon and Ghen were approaching either side of the tomb. Avon moved towards her; Ghen’s gaze fell on the likeness of the strange man carved into its lid.


    “Resurrection is trivial,” he muttered.


    “What?” said Avon sharply.


    She froze too, staring at him. Ghen had been looking down at the coffin lid, where those strange runes were carved…


    But the man shook his head. “Nothing, my lord.”


    “You read it,” she said. “Those runes on the coffin—look! Do you know the language?”


    She directed Avon to the runes too. He frowned, looking down at them, then up at Ghen. “This is the Ardish tongue. Your native language.”


    “I don’t read it, my lord.”


    Avon curled his lip at the obvious lie. “Resurrection is trivial. From the monks dedicated to the Fifth Philosopher, yet I don’t recall that line in his work. Interesting. Valerie, what did you…?”


    “I’ll tell you later,” she said quickly. “Listen—I can stop the wyverns attacking us. But you have to trust me, okay?”


    She didn’t want to blurt everything out in front of Ghen. If Avon insisted on keeping the man alive, then at least they ought to exercise some caution in what they revealed around him. Outside, she sensed the wyverns as before, but this time, she caught another flicker. A glyph. Her wyvern was out there too.


    “All right,” said Avon after a moment. He glanced at the scowling Ghen. “We’ll scour the place in case there’s anything else, then leave.”


    There was nothing else of magical interest, she knew, but Valerie bit her lip and said nothing. Their search turned up a few books that hadn’t rotted. Ghen packed those away. Otherwise, the monks appeared to have led an austere life. They had all died in that one room.


    That bothered her too, and Valerie glanced back at the monks’ bones with a sense of unease when they retraced their steps, but the monastery remained deathly quiet. Even so, she didn’t want to linger any longer.


    At the entrance door, she placed a hand on Avon’s arm. “I’m going to fall unconscious,” she said, “and you’ll have to carry me. Whatever you do, don’t attack the wyverns, do you understand?”


    Again, Avon frowned but nodded.


    “Open the door,” she instructed.


    While they did that, Valerie focused her mind on the branded wyvern outside. Come to me, she called. Come and protect me.


    The great double doors creaked open, Ghen and Avon straining with the effort. Valerie stepped outside. Some wyverns circled over the monastery; others perched on the pillars. But she found her wyvern instantly, its glyph glowing even from a distance. It swooped around in a circle and then dived towards the monastery. Avon cursed, hand flying to the hilt of his sword. Ghen’s eyes widened.


    Valerie closed her eyes—and jumped into the wyvern’s body.


    Instantly, her perspective reversed. She soared through the air, the monastery coming up fast before her, and she saw her body collapsing into Avon’s arms, Ghen grabbing at Avon’s waist—no, not his waist—


    Maska’s sword flashed blindingly white.


    She banked up, disoriented. Then down again a second later, and what she saw next terrified her. Avon held her body tight, protecting her with his own. And Ghen held Maska’s sword, his face twisted in righteous anger, raising it to strike.


    He was going to kill them both.