Princess of Light: Book 1 in the Heirs of a Broken Land Series

“They’re afraid of the fire!” Cassara repeated. Avarielle looked without surprise at the destruction.

“Well, so am I, Cassara!” Avarielle answered as she downed another Elom. “What are we going to do, set the whole town on fire?”

Cassara felt her magic rise within her, and she held out the amulet towards the burning building, willing the flames to become tamer. A small sweat broke out on her brow as the fires began to recede, her powers answering her quickly and easily, without smoke or glowing embers.

“I think I can do this, Avarielle!” Cassara shouted at the warrior, who was beginning to falter from fatigue.

“How many of these are there?” She grumbled as Cassara approached her, the side of her face covered in blood from a gash at her hairline. “Order the archers to retreat and come to the center of the village, where the fire pit is!” Avarielle’s eyes sparked to life as she began to see Cassara’s plan.

“Arlos!” She shouted and managed to be heard over the sounds of the charging Eloms. Cassara summoned her fires to protect Avarielle, practicing as she easily formed a wall before the warrior.

“Order your archers to retreat!” Avarielle shouted, unfazed by Cassara’s magic. Arlos stared open-mouthed for a few moments at the wall Cassara had created, before turning back to his men, ordering them to make their way to the third roof, where they could easily climb down behind the line of Eloms and the fire created by Cassara.

Without the archers slowing them, the Eloms came furiously, a few dying in the white fires before they stopped, as though they had just noticed the light.

“They’re all down, and everyone’s in the center,” Avarielle said, and Cassara jumped at the voice beside her. Last she had noticed, the warrior was in front of her and none of the archers were down. Cassara nodded, wondering how easily she would pull this off.

Frustrated from the lack of movement from the two open sides of the walls, the Eloms struck the other failing portions of the wall with renewed intensity. Some of the monsters were pushed into Cassara’s flames by their kin’s anticipation of the blood and flesh of humans.

Cassara backed up, keeping an eye on her wall of magic, the white fires easily staying strong. Avarielle put her hand on her shoulder, stopping her, and Cassara realized she was in the center, in front of the gathered villagers. She hadn’t seen that time pass, either.

She shook her head, feeling as though she was sleepwalking, unable to control her movements and not fully grasping the situation.

Even the breaking of the wall to her left didn’t elicit a reaction from her, only numbness existing where usually would have been fear. She heard the villagers scream behind her, and reached out, calling her wall of fire around her, imploring it to surround them. It did, with as great an ease as she had had difficulty wielding her magic at first.

She felt the fires surround them, felt the Eloms burn within it before she even smelled their flesh. The amulet grew warm, warmer than even the strongest fire, yet it did not burn her.

All that she could see was fire, white flames accented by pinks, purples, yellows, sometimes even black. She wanted to turn around and make sure that everyone was within her wall, that Shirina was with them and safe, and that none of the Eloms had made it through. Visions of Avarielle’s bloodied face turned the fires around her red for an instant. Or so she thought.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t turn around, couldn’t make her body obey her, her mind only a witness to what she was creating.

She realized her arm was raised, holding the amulet. She felt pain where the blood was missing, the arm having kept that position too long. She wanted to unclench her fingers from around the amulet, the crescent shape biting deeply into her hand, but she couldn’t even remember what it felt like to move her hands.

She felt warm, and light, and lost, without control, only her wall remaining, only what she had created to protect them still before her. But she could no longer remember why, and through her numbness she was beginning to feel the fear, like an old friend come to greet her. Still, it could not force a reaction from her.

Her body and her mind were each forgetting the other existed.