Arianna and the Spirit of the Storm Read online

  Contents

  Inside Cover

  Copyright

  Journal

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chpater 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Author Bios

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the author. In such case neither the author, or distributor has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  If this book is being sold by a vendor other than the following large and established vendors / distributors: Createspace.com, Amazon.com, or any distributing partners listed on the aforementioned websites, there is a high degree of certainty this book was purchased as a pirated copy. It is requested that you contact the author immediately so that the vendor in question can be notified to cease and desist their practices. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted material in violation of the author's rights.

  Copyright © 2019 by Stephen Landry / Robbie Ballew

  [email protected]

  Cover Illustration by Purwa Gustira

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database, retrieval system, or torrent web service, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Ash fell around me like snow. Or at least, what I've been told snow was like. It hasn't snowed since the day I was born. No snow, no rain, nothing.

  "It isn't fair!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. Flames engulfed the funeral pyre and danced into the night sky like a fire-demon taunting me from beyond the veil.

  I could feel the still warm embers as they brushed against my skin. Electricity arced up and around the palm of my hand. My eyes were glowing blue in the moonlight.

  "You can't leave me like this," I screamed again at the fire. Angry. I could hear a voice in my head screaming at me to run. The voice he'd taught me to ignore. To suppress. At that moment, I wanted to listen to it. To get as far away from there as possible. But it was impossible. Where would I go? What would I do? I felt useless.

  I felt dizzy. Disoriented. I stared at the words on the torn piece of paper in my hand hoping they could help me find my footing. Keep me grounded. I've stared at them so long now I can see where the ink is starting to run. The paper, faded yellow, starting to crack.

  "Aria, if you are reading this, it means I am dead and it is your turn to carry on my mission," My father's last message to me. Carine the explorer. Carine the adventurer. Carine the abandoner!

  He had always told me to choose my path and yet now, after death, he was telling me to finish his mission.

  "It isn't fair," I screamed again.

  I had watched him leave so many times. He always promised he would return. Now… he was both dead and a liar.

  I felt my stomach rumble. I had forgotten to eat again. Not that there was anything to eat. The Kingdom of Idril was a wasteland. Elves everywhere were starving. The world was on the brink of war and now I was alone.

  Before the drought, he worked for the survey corps, where he would take missions into the forests to explore old ruins. That's how he met my mother, Solph. He's told me the story many times. They were from two different villages, working on two separate survey missions, united by chance at an inn in the dwarven kingdom of Vaeger. He was coming downstairs for a drink when he saw her dancing in a blue cotton dress. "In that moment," he would always say, "I forgot how to walk, to breathe, to do anything but love."

  Their eyes met and she gave him a smile that he said could have calmed the fiercest storm. I try to imagine what that smile must have looked like. It helps calm me when I feel the storm welling up inside. I wish I could have seen it for myself.

  When the survey corps disbanded he continued to leave on his own accord. Sometimes it was just a night or two other times he would be gone for weeks. Maria, the mid-wife, a woman as old and ancient as the village itself, maybe older, spent those nights with me. She would tell me my father was a brave man, braver than even the greatest knights of the kingdom. She told me how he would venture across mountains, into caves, how he had fought and slain Satyrs and even held his sword against dragons. Determined to uncover some truth, some hidden magic out in the wild.

  Always happy to hear of his return I could remember him telling me stories of his adventures. Teaching me to harness what I had hidden inside me. We would spend several days and nights out in the woods, starving, struggling to survive as he taught me to build a shelter, gather and start a fire, even hunt and fish though we rarely caught anything. When I was young I blamed him for my starving. That was until I learned there was almost nothing there to catch. The little food we had came from the kingdom. My father had worked harder than most to make sure I didn't go hungry.

  Our kingdom was once a far different place. I've heard stories of the great Fennox Castle, towering over the sprawling city if Fennox-Calil. They say from a mountain ledge overlooking the city you could see miles of lush farmland to the south, and the never-ending ocean to the north. The world was alive with the sounds of animals, birds in the sky, rivers, and streams filled with fish and surrounded by life.

  The bustling streets of the city were walked not only by elves but dwarves, centaurs, even humans. We openly traded goods and ideas with our neighbors and even began embracing the principals of democracy.

  It should have been different.

  As a child, I came to believe I was unlucky. My father who disappeared time and time again, who spent night after night in his study. I would listen to the stories of the world as it once was. I was so close. Almost born into that perfect world. That peaceful, beautiful world where I could have had cake on my birthday. A world in which my father and mother would still be alive and would grow old and die with grandkids by their side. I was almost born into that utopia of a world but the night of my birth was a curse.

  1.

  15 years ago.

  A fierce storm raged as my mother cried and my father, Carine paced back and forth outside a small room. His messy ponytail whipping back and forth hitting the side of his face as he turned on his heels. He would pace for hours keeping rhythm with the storm outside. Turning as lightning lit up the silhouette of the mountains miles away. The sound of his footsteps masked by the thunder and wind that cracked our modest little home. A bolt of lightning followed by crashing thunder, th
e sound deafening and yet once it's over the silence becomes maddening. The storm and my mother's screams come to an abrupt halt.

  My father told me about that day so many times I feel like I was there with him. Like the memory was a gift he gave to me. The first time I heard it I was enthralled, saddened but happy in the way my father told it to me. For a long time, it was my favorite story. Until I knew better. The parts my father left out that came to haunt me. Knowing that I had never seen rain like he had that day. That as the midwife, Maria, handed me over to him and he held me in his arms he cried for me. The touch of my soft skin against his calloused hands. At the moment of my birth, my father told me I had a spark in my eyes, magic, that I was special and destined. I couldn't help but ignore his words. I never felt different than anyone else in my village. We were all just getting by.

  My father never told me about the end of the story, but Maria did. She said it was my right to know. When my father rushed into the room he was so overjoyed he didn't even notice at first. He was filled with joy at the love that had entered his life, yet was unaware of the love that had left. When he finally saw her, he fell to his knees. Maria was afraid he might drop me by accident, but he never did. He laid me on my mother's motionless chest and crawled into the bed, cradling us in his arms. And there he stayed, weeping late into the night. The night I was born.

  Even after, no matter how many times he told me the story of my birth I could see him choking back those tears, that sadness tucked away inside. He held it down for me. He always believed it was all connected. My birth, her death, and the drought.

  My father used to tell me about the world as it had been. The deep gorge that ran past our village with a trickling stream at the bottom was once a roaring river. The dusty, withering crop fields were once lush and green. And the abandoned buildings that now sat boarded up at the center of our village were once a bustling marketplace.

  And even the birds seemed no longer able to sing.

  My father used to pore over books. He spent years searching for answers. I still have flashes of memory from when I was very young. Turning the pages of those ancient books, though I couldn't understand the runes and inscriptions. My father reading to me about myths and legends as I fell asleep. The memories are always triggered by the smell. Everything I remember about my father is encapsulated in that musty, dusty smell.

  I loved the smell of the pages. Always will. Even now the paper still gives me a sense of shelter. Our home, a small library filled with leather-bound parchments and scrolls tied with red ribbon. Seals that had been holding legends wrapped in parchment for hundreds of years broken, picked off and lay in piles on the floor. The ink stains and dyes that ran down my father's desk and several antique shelves. It was there my father made a breakthrough. It was there in our home, my father's library many years ago the mission began.

  I was playing in the dirt. Making a chocolate pie. At least what I imagined chocolate pie would be. It was mud. Most of what I ate, like others in my village, were scraps. My father, Carine, crouched down next to me and smiled. I remember having mud all over my face. "No matter what happens Arianna you must never let anyone else determine your path in life. You have the spirit of the storm in you my little songbird. Embrace it, it is what makes you who you are." His words more are clear to me than the paper. Still, they echo. I might not have been unable to understand at the time, but I always knew they were important. My father rose to greet Mayor Talze, a very fat man, and a handful of village leaders. I stood, not as a child but as a dreamer.

  I remember seeing a wilted tomato plant nearby. Tomatoes have always been my favorite, though they rarely come in the ration packs. I tried to pick one from the plant, but it fell the moment my clumsy fingers touched it and splattered on the ground. The insides were all brown. "Don't wander too far, Arianna," I could hear my father call after me.

  "It's getting late, Carine, this had better be worth it," the Mayor said.

  "It will be," my father promised.

  "There's been grumbling among the workers at the mines, you know. You continue to take a share of the rations, but…"

  My father cut the Mayor's cold voice off, "But once I've found a way to end the drought, there will be no more need of rations. All those workers toiling away in your mines will be free to go back to their old lives. Or is that what you are afraid of?"

  One of the village leaders grumbles, I can't understand them. Nor am I listening with anything more than a child's natural curiosity.

  My father continues, "I have found some compelling evidence to suggest this drought has been brought on by magic."

  "Magic, what are you talking about?" One of the village leaders interjects, "You are an even bigger fool than Talze has told us."

  The Mayor holds up his hand and the elders, who had begun laughing, stop all at once, "Magic hasn't been practiced outside the Royal Academy in decades. Don't you think the king would know if one of his mages went rogue?" The Mayor politely asked my father, lowering his hand down by his side and taking a small piece of candy from his pocket. He placed it in his mouth with such belligerent joy as the others watched with preying eyes.

  "I don't know," said my father, his voice diminished.

  "And what purpose could such a curse possibly serve?" said another one of the village leaders. By this time I wasn't paying much attention. I heard the Mayor begin to speak of the mine again. The same lecture I've heard him give a hundred times since then. How it had brought the village together. How it promised work for one generation after another. Despite my father's pleas, no one was listening to what he had to say.

  My attention was on the edge of the forest that bordered the crop fields. I swore I saw a pair of beady eyes peer out and vanish. The eyes caught my attention and I toddled toward them. A guard was patrolling the tree line, but he was walking the other way now. Maybe I could get just close enough to see what the eyes belonged to.

  My father and the Mayor, just within earshot, continued to argue.

  "I don't know! All I know is according to legend there is a way by which the spirits of the Rain, Thunder, and Lightning can be captured into three magical relics."

  "And do you know where these relics are?" Even as I inched away I could hear the Mayor's dismissal.

  "No, I don't."

  "And do you know how to release the spirits once you find them?"

  "No, I don't. But that does not change the fact that it must be done! We must send out an expedition to find and retrieve the relics."

  "We've heard the man's case. I think it's time to put it to a vote. Who would like to send a group of our finest elves on a perilous journey through Satyr infested forests…"

  I was almost too far away to hear the rest as I giggled and approached the dark woods.

  "…To find these relics that may or may not exist, and to break the curse that may or may not have been placed on our land?"

  There was no response as the sunset and the light of a full moon shone above.

  I was in the woods. Alone. Farther than I had ventured before. I could still taste the mud on my lips. My father had lost track of me while arguing with the council. Perhaps he should not have met the Mayor and the village council so far from the center of the village but he wanted to prove a point by showing the dying crops. He wanted to appeal to their sense of adventure by showing them the edge of the woods and had hoped to mesmerize them with his stories of being a member of the Survey Corps that had mapped the borders of our kingdom and the others around us.

  His stories were mesmerizing. To me. Even at three years old as I stumbled across the roots of trees into the night I could feel chills run down my arm as if Emu, the goddess of the woods had invited me in. I could hear a trumpet sounding in the distance. The guard must have seen me wander into the woods, but that didn't bother me. I was an explorer-like my father, determined to see all around me. The forest floor was filled with flowers of all shapes and sizes. Some of them were covered in small insects that gathered
pollen and drank a honey-like substance from that formed on the tips of leaves. Red, blue, purple. Each flower was alive despite not having rained for years. The roots of the forest ran deep. Far underground into a spring that was enchanted. Elves and others of my kind had access to the spring from a well in the center of our village but it was always under guard and protected as our only means of gathering freshwater.

  I imagined all the strange and wonderful friends I might meet. As a child, the forest looked like the most magical place in existence. At such a young age my father had told me stories of the world but not of the dangers. Just before a clearing I pushed through the last of sparse underbrush and stopped short as a creature stepped out from behind a tree. The creature was wearing rough leather garments. Its legs were covered in fur and it had hooves for feet. As I looked up I could make out a face that looked almost elvish but there was something off - it was familiar yet far away.

  I held out my hand and a ball of blue electric light formed in my palm. Maybe the creature wanted to play? I tossed the ball toward the creature, but it hit the ground much too soon. It bounced and rolled and came to a stop at the creature's feet.

  The creature bent down to examine the ball of light. I could see its face more clearly now. Gentle, curious, but with large, twisting horns coming from the top of its head. As I stood studying my discovery, I could hear footsteps rushing through the forest behind me and voices calling out my name.

  My father stopped several steps behind me. The creature looked at my father, their eyes locking for several seconds though it felt like a lifetime. They shared what I could only describe now as inquisitive glances before the creature turned and dashed away.