Page 7 of The Witch’s Fate (The Lunaterra Chronicles #13)

RYKER

W hat in the fuck just happened? This is not a pitter patter, this is a battering.

Confused and frustrated, rain falls around me as I try again and again.

The heavy water drops pound in a punishing way.

I need to get the hell out of here…but it’s not working.

It’s as if the portal is broken; the magic no longer allows the portal to open.

I grit my teeth and summon more power.

The portal is about to give—I can feel that it’s seconds away from snapping open—when the sky opens up with thunder and lightning. My heart pounds and every hair stands on edge. Something’s not right. A chill runs down my spine.

Thunder crashes and lightning sparks through the sky not far away.

Buckets come down on the top of my head.

Wind gusts into my back and into my hands, swirling all around me and whipping my hair into my forehead, and darkness rolls overhead.

I glance up without letting go of the portal and see nothing but black thunderclouds.

Fuck. The change is sudden and a different kind of anxiousness wraps itself around me.

Magic hits me along with the wind. That magic, whoever it belongs to, has to be causing the storm—it’s too sudden and strong to be anything natural. Goosebumps race down my arms at the thought of the witch.

The portal thrashes in my hands, starting to snap shut, squeezing the hell out of my fingers in the process. I throw myself against it, bracing my feet hard on the ground and shoving with all my strength.

“Open,” I order through clenched teeth. “Open, damn you!”

But the portal doesn’t open. My only way of getting home closes before my very eyes as the rain crashes down around me.

The crush around my fingers is stronger than a pair of boulders.

It’s not the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in the army.

I’ll bear it if it gets the damn portal to stop closing and let me through, but it doesn’t stop.

Instincts take over to save my fingers and I yank my hands away as the portal chomps shut and dies, leaving nothing but a shimmer in the air.

My breath leaves me as I stare ahead as what just happened is not possible.

The curses I let out are drowned out by the rain. Thunder and lightning race across the sky in deafening bursts. Everything about this is wrong. I should have had enough power to get back. I don’t know what magic could’ve shut it down like that.

I find the anchor on the ground and stand over it, every sense I have screaming a warning. Storms like this don’t just come out of nowhere. This has to be related to the magic of this place. I haven’t done anything to upset it. Not that I know of. I was warned to go unnoticed, and I thought I had.

I attempt to open the portal again, then again, until most of my crystals are entirely drained. Nothing happens in return for this effort except some minor crackles and fizzles in the air. I don’t get the portal to reappear. Any hope of the portal working is drained as well.

I try one more time, rain drizzling down my back, then scoop up the anchor and shove it into my pack, fixing a glare on the space where the portal was only a minute or two ago.

The very portal that accepted all those florals, then shut me out.

A prickling in the back of my mind says that this is happening because of those thoughts. The ones of the witch.

With a final curse, I move into the forest. Dead set on finding her. Confronting her. And if this was not her doing, pleading for her aid in getting home.

It dawns on me as I walk: I am alone, surrounded by potential enemies north and south of here, with no shelter, no means of escape.

Fuck ! I cannot see more than a few feet in front of me.

It is completely transformed from how it was only a short time ago.

The darkness is thick under the trees, and I make my way under the cover of the branches using the flashes of lightning that manage to get through.

No matter how the storm began, I don’t like it. I don’t trust it. I want nothing to fucking do with whatever the hell just happened.

A short distance into the forest, I find a small clearing that is mostly sheltered by branches and stop at the bank of a gnarled tree trunk.

I swing my pack—now sodden and twice as heavy as it was—down to the roots and dig out a few smaller crystals, these still pulsing with power.

It is concentrated power, as these crystals are meant for communication over long distances, and they are among the more precious items in my pack.

These crystals are only to be used when there are no other options.

I am still searching for another option even as I place three of the crystals in a triangle in the vee of the largest tree roots and roll a fourth in the palm of my hand.

Rain batters the branches above me. Plenty of the droplets seep through and land on my head.

Some of them drop down the side of my neck and onto my clothes. Goosebumps prickle down my shoulders.

I don’t see another option though. This is the last thing I wanted to do.

There’s also no telling how long this storm will last or what level of damage it will cause before it passes. If I wait until then to attempt to make contact, I do not know how long I will have been missing, or what consequences might be levied against me.

My jaw aches with how hard I grimace at that thought.

I center my focus on the crystal in my hand and mutter the call. Resentment grasps my throat.

For a moment, I’m certain it will not work—that somehow even these crystals, hidden safe in my pack, were also drained in my attempt to widen the portal.

But heat flares in my hand, and there is a subtle vibration, and the spell takes, connecting across the lands to its match.

It’s fortunate that a connected crystal glows, otherwise I might not be visible to Jorge, the commander who swims into view on one of the crystal’s facets.

He’s a human commander in the army and someone I greatly respect.

“Jorge,” I say as Jorge’s image shakes in the crystal.

Somehow as concern mars his face, the rain comes down even harder, which I did not think was possible.

The sound of it is contained in the clearing, so it seems even louder than it might if I was out in the brunt of the storm. “Can you hear me?”

His image wavers again, as if the distance between the crystals is too great to overcome. I grip it as tightly as I can without dropping it. Jorge’s voice crackles, reaching me in fragments I can’t quite make out.

Fucking hell.

“Can you hear me?” I ask again. “Jorge? Am I coming through?”

“—you returned?” he questions. “Ryker. I see you. Where are you? Have you made it back?”

“No.” A peal of thunder crashes overhead as if the center of the storm is following me.

“I sent the florals through, but when I went—” A crack of thunder interrupts me.

The lightning is so bright and close that it illuminates the dark clearing for a few seconds at a time.

There is so much of it that it cannot be caused by natural means unless the storm is swirling in a tight circle directly above where I stand.

“When I tried to enlarge the portal, it…fought back.”

“You’ve encountered hostile troops?” His voice is muddled but I shake my head in case mine is on his end as well.

“No,” I state perhaps a little too loud.

I wait through another burst of thunder.

“The portal slammed shut and wouldn’t open again—” A gout of water comes through the branches directly onto my shoulder and my lips form a tight line as I breathe once then twice through gritted teeth.

“This storm came. I can’t summon the portal. My crystals are drained.”

Jorge nods. I shield the crystal with my hand so I can keep him in view. The droplets are drawn to the light like a magnet, and his image is magnified in grotesque ways when the droplets slide down the facet.

“Find the?—”

This time, it’s Jorge who is foiled by the thunder. His image turns cloudy, almost fading out, and I press myself closer to the tree, hoping to maintain our connection for a few more minutes.

“I couldn’t hear you.”

“Find the witch,” he says, his expression calm, not betraying a hint of uncertainty about this order. “The witch. She is the only being there who has the means to help you and get you back if the portal isn’t opening.”

Something inside me shifts at the very thought of her. This woman whose reputation is vast and yet no one knows of her personally. Like a myth.

“She is the only one there,” Jorge replies. “Find her. She can help you.”

“Do you have any information on where she lives?”

Jorge opens his mouth, but before his words reach me, his image breaks apart in the crystal’s facet and dissolves into shadows.

“Jorge,” I call again with dull irritation as I heave in a breath that raises my shoulders and then I crack my neck.

He doesn’t answer. The remaining power in the crystal flickers out, and the glowing light disappears just as Jorge’s image did.

My jaw clenches as rain drips from my hair down my face and the sky lights up with more lightning strikes.

I lean my forehead against the trunk of the tree and bite back more frustrated curses. Jorge may not have known where the witch is rumored to live, but he might have had some information, which would have made my next task easier.

I give myself a few seconds, then pull myself up. I didn’t become a soldier because such tasks are easy. I became a soldier because my greatest talents are fighting and using brute strength to force myself along any given path.

As the storm howls above me, I gather the crystals, then shoulder my pack and set out.

One step carefully after the other. Trudging through the mud, my senses are on high alert although my wolf is calm. Eerily calm. That grants me reprieve from worrisome thoughts.

Once I’ve reached the grassy field, it’s slow going.

The storm, which seems to be gathering impossible strength, turns the soil under my feet to sludge.

Wet grasses cling to my boots. The light of the moons is almost nonexistent behind the black clouds, and the lightning strikes do not let me see more than a few feet ahead.

I wait through enough lightning flashes to get some idea of where I am.

This is the same side of the forest I came out of when I finished gathering the florals, and there was no sign of anyone living on the paths in this direction.

I didn’t see anything to suggest a dwelling on my way to open the portal.

The witch must be living somewhere else.

A heady combination of doubt and curiosity crash inside me like a storm. It’s not only my curiosity that guides me now. It is my duty to find the witch. It is my duty to ask her for assistance in recharging my crystals.

Once again, the world—or the gods—seem to be aligning with my private desires, which rattles me. I couldn’t have imagined a circumstance that would send me through a violent thunderstorm to satisfy my curiosity about a witch no one has seen in years.

But I did everything I could to open that portal. If it is fate that slammed it shut, then I cannot argue against that. Not in any way that sends me home without searching for the witch.

My wolf stirs at the thought, and it urges me forward.

I travel during the flashes of lightning, squinting through the heavy rain to catch a glimpse of the forest on the other side of the fields. If I cannot find her dwelling here, I may have to begin searching the trees, which will be far more difficult.

But I live for the challenge. For intrigue to be satisfied.

With a slight grin at the thought of finding her and having a story to tell, I carry on.

Hours pass in the early morning and I don’t stop.

I refuse to give in until I’ve found her.

The mud sucks my boots down into it, and my thighs begin to burn from pulling them back out again.

The rain is cold on my skin, but my muscles warm from the work of moving me and my gear across the field.

It is a comforting sensation. My body is used to taxing physical work, and when I am set to a task like this, my mind calms and sharpens.

The field seems endless in the dark and the rain, as if I’ll be walking across it forever, trapped in a vortex of magic that is meant to imprison me here.

I have the feeling time is passing. The day is passing. Sometimes I think it is passing too quickly, but then it feels like I have been trudging through the mud forever.

The line of trees on the opposite side of the field begins to materialize in the distance.

I keep my eyes focused on the sharp shapes of the trees whenever the lightning illuminates them.

I don’t think of the possibility that the witch will be tucked away in some far-off place that I cannot find.

She will be here somewhere, even if it takes me days.

I simply keep moving.

Another shape begins to appear in the lightning flashes. It’s a gap in the trees—or rather a shape in front of the trees. I angle myself toward it and press on until… My breathing slows and a warmth runs through me. Stillness settles and finally. Fucking finally.

Yes, there is something here.

A garden plot, I think as a smirk forms on my face, turned to mud, and a smaller structure—an outdoor oven, maybe. It is hard to tell in the rain.

And then there is the cottage. Its pointed roof is the shape I saw from a short distance away.

I have to pause to catch my breath. It must be her. The witch.

My body’s warmed up and used to traveling with the weight of my pack pushing me down and the mud slowing me, so when I stop, my heart keeps running. Thundering itself as the lightning crashes around me.

Now that I am here, within sight of a dwelling—and it must be the witch’s dwelling, as there is no one else in this part of the land—the rumors I have heard flood my mind.

The witch of Athica is said to be a recluse who lives alone and despises all other beings.

She’s also said to be all-powerful, which some say is the reason she lives alone—that her powers are too dangerous to exist side by side with others.

I’m steps away from finding out if these rumors are true. If they are, I may be steps away from my own death.

I shake out my shoulders and head for the house. More eager than I’ve ever been, my wolf pushes me forward, ever restless and on the prowl.