Page 33 of The Tree of Spirits (Paragons #2)

FOREST OF DREAMS

I dreamt of crazy, impossible things. I was walking through a forest of dead trees. Poison lightning, green and putrid, dripped from the dry branches.

I had to get somewhere. I had to get there now. To the conference center! I had to save my friends!

I started running. But the forest was dense. And I kept getting zapped by the liquid lightning. It filled the puddles on the ground. I ran faster, trying to pick up enough speed to hop over them.

Something exploded, knocking me down. I staggered to my feet, dizzy and disoriented. The trees had turned into boxes. And they were exploding, sending tremors into the ground, such powerful tremors that I almost lost my footing again.

The last explosion went off, but there was still one box left. I moved toward it.

“Careful,” Rane said, setting her hand on my shoulder. “It could be dangerous.”

I moved forward cautiously, reaching for the box, daring to open it.

I found a set of black armor inside. “I know this armor,” I mumbled.

Then, suddenly, there were three people in front of me: the fiends who’d kidnapped the Apprentices. The Templars. I tried to see their faces, but they were blurry.

They’d stolen the box of armor. They were carrying it away. Off to the conference center.

I tried to run after them, but a big truck swerved in front of me, cutting me off. I couldn’t get through. The loopy, cursive text on the side of the truck read: Intelli-move, the intelligent way to move .

“You have to move the truck,” I told the Elves loading up chunks of dead tree into the back. “They’re getting away!”

Isidora stood in front of me, tall and proud, her long bell sleeves folded regally in front of her. “We can’t do that. We have a job to do.”

Rane tugged on my arm, pulling me back. “Let them work, Savannah. I’m lucky they had a cancellation so they could come today. They have to move the tree now . I don’t want my family to get evicted from the Emporium because our dead tree dropped a branch on Prince Fenris’s head.”

“But the fiends are getting away!” I pulled against her hold. “They’re going to kidnap my friends!”

“You should have booked my services.” Raytan was here now too. He wore a t-shirt that read: Big Muscles Move Big Things . “My company doesn’t block the road with our trucks.”

“That’s because you don’t have any trucks anymore!” Isidora laughed.

Raytan glowered at her. “And whose fault is that?”

“Mine.” Xael stepped between them.

Raytan rubbed his head. “Xael, my boy, what happened to you? You’ve always been such a good boy. You’d never steal from me. You’d never play with explosives. You’d never hurt your cousins.”

“I had to, Uncle. I love her.” Xael wrapped his arm around Miatrix.

Raytan gave the young Elf an icy glare. “That girl put those ideas in your head!”

“No, it wasn’t Miatrix,” Rane told him. “It was a dream. Xael was trapped and scared and didn’t know what to do. The solution came to him in a dream.”

Xael nodded. “She’s right. It was all a dream.”

“This is all a dream,” I muttered to myself.

And then I woke up.

When I opened my eyes, Conner was sitting next to me on the sofa, reading a novel with an emerald dragon on the cover.

I sat up. “How long have I been asleep?”

“A few hours.” Conner closed his book. “How are you feeling?”

“What was in that bottle you gave me?” I wiped the sleep from my eyes. “I had the weirdest dreams.”

“Yeah, that particular elixir sometimes has that effect.” He felt my forehead.

I shooed him away. “Uh, you do not want to be close to me right now. My skin is all clammy and yucky. And I bet I have bed hair.” I patted the top of my head. And, sure enough, my hair was a mess.

“Believe me, Red, I’ve seen much worse. I’ve battled monsters, remember?”

I looked around the room. The two of us were alone.

“The others are still out there, working. There are a lot of helpless, lost Watchers to bring back to the flock.” He chuckled to himself.

“And yet you gave up that important Quest to stay here with me.”

“I had to make sure you’re ok.” He gave me a crooked smile. “And, besides, we have more important things to do.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, like finding the Templars. If we do that—if we unmask them in public—then the whole world will see that the Rebels are not behind all of this.” His brows shimmied upward. “Any idea where to start?”

I nibbled on my lip. “Actually, I might have a few ideas.”

“Wow.” He set down his book. “I didn’t actually expect that.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think.”

“You’ve been asleep,” he pointed out.

I rose from the sofa. “I had some weird dreams, and they, well, helped me process things. Regarding the Templars.” I started pacing around the room.

“They planned the kidnapping down to even the smallest detail. Starting with the invisibility flu that they tried out on those kids, the test run before they used it to get the Watchers off their backs post-kidnapping.”

Conner watched me pace.

“And then there’s Rane’s dead tree,” I said. “I think the Templars were behind that too.”

“You think the Templars murdered a tree?” Conner’s lip twitched.

“Yes, I know how silly it sounds for an evil group of kidnappers to target a tree, but just hear me out. Rane’s neighbors killed the tree with electricity.

We have the pictures to prove it. But Rane told me that when the Watchers questioned the neighbors, they claimed they didn’t remember doing it. ”

“They could have been lying,” said Conner.

“Or the Templars could have bewitched them to do it,” I countered.

“Think about it. Rane’s family’s shop is right there on the road to the conference center.

When the tree died, it had to be removed.

And that tree is massive. Removing it meant bringing in a big truck that blocked the whole road.

That slowed down the Watchers. They couldn’t get their forcefield buster to the building. One of the Knights had to carry it.”

Understanding flashed in Conner’s eyes. “The Templars lured the Knights out of the conference center, so they couldn’t protect the Apprentices. That’s why they tripped the jewelry store’s alarm. That wasn’t a mistake at all.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I nudged a ripple in the carpet with the toe of my shoe. “And then there’s Xael, the Metamorph who fell in love with an Elf.”

“You think he was bewitched too?”

“No, I think he actually loves Miatrix. He didn’t want to fight in the war between their clans, but he didn’t know how to get out of it.

Then, suddenly, the solution came to him in a dream.

Xael staged the theft of Raytan’s trucks.

He set off an explosion to wound himself and his cousins.

All of that put Raytan’s business out of commission for a while.

And Rane’s family was forced to find another removal company for their tree.

That company had only one appointment free, an appointment for exactly when the Templars needed the road blocked. ”

Conner frowned. “That does seem quite serendipitous.”

“Oh, but there’s more! After the incident at the Tournament, the General sent the Techno Knight’s armor to Daykan for analysis.”

“Daykan. The famous Alchemist?”

“Right. After he looked at the armor, Daykan sent it back, using the General’s usual courier.”

“The General’s usual courier.” Conner considered my words. “That’s Raytan.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. I saw one of Raytan’s trucks. It was carrying the debris from the battle at the Brotherhood’s compound.” I cleared my throat. “Ok, so shortly after Daykan handed over the armor to the courier—one of Raytan’s guys—all of Raytan’s trucks went missing.”

Conner chewed on his lip. “The Templars stole the armor.”

I nodded. “And covered up the theft by making it just one of many things that went missing. When the Templars barged into the conference center yesterday, they didn’t have just the one suit.

They had three of them. So I think they stole the techno suit to use it as a template to make two more of them.

The two of us were even there when they tested out those suits. ”

“At the Brotherhood’s compound in the Park,” Conner said slowly.

“Yes! The Templars tested the suits in the Park. Then they used them for extra firepower when they came to kidnap the Apprentices. Don’t you see? The Templars planned this. They manipulated everything .”

Conner jumped off the sofa. “They are certainly devious. They’ve planned this all very carefully. That means they likely sent the Watchers into another dimension as a distraction.”

“Yeah, but a distraction from what?”

He crossed his arms, frowning. “I don’t know. They want to distract us from whatever they’re planning next, I suppose. We need to figure out where they’re going, so we can be waiting there for them…”

“What is it?” I asked.

His eyes focused on me. “We might not know where they’ll be, but I think we can figure out where they’ve been.”

“How?”

“Remember the metal orb you picked up from the battlefield in the Park the other day?”

I nodded.

“That’s a celestial globe,” he said. “It’s used to communicate with the Spirit Trees, like a navigator for the Many Realms. All of the Spirit Trees are connected by a kind of magical energy network that flows between realms. The celestial globe projects the symbol—the coordinates—for the tree you want to travel to, and then the Spirit Tree takes you there. ”

“I’ve seen that,” I replied. “The car that brought me to the Fortress projected something inside the tree.”

“That’s the human hack to navigate the Many Realms. The magical method is the celestial globe, like the one you got from the Templars in the Park.

The thing is, celestial globes keep a history of when and where they’ve been.

We can browse that history, Red. We can prove that these Templars are from the Many Realms, and we can use their own celestial globe to do it. ”

Hope blossomed inside of me. I could feel my lips stretching into the start of a smile. “We could prove that you and the other Rebels had nothing to do with any of this!”

“Yeah, if we’re lucky, we can figure out which realm the Templars come from. And then we can rescue the Apprentices they kidnapped.” Smiling back at me, he grabbed my hands. “So, tell me, Red, where did you put the celestial globe you found?”

“It’s at my house.”

Conner pulled me toward the door. “Let’s go get it then. Before all the Watchers are back. Remember, they’re still looking for you. And your house is one of the first places they’ll search.”