The Guardians of the Forest: Book Two by Kelly Napoli
***
Kiethara rolled out of her hammock and onto the ground.
“Ow,” she moaned into the dirt, as though she was trying to rebuke it.
Kiethara jumped up and brushed herself off. She, for some reason unknown to her, felt filled with energy. Her heart would not stop pounding in her chest. She felt like she could take on the world.
Shaking her head, she leaned against one of the two trees supporting her hammock, trying to calm herself down. After five full minutes, her heart would not slow down. Her brow felt feverish, but most of the snow had melted already, so she could not cool herself down. It had been such a light winter…
Kiethara took a deep breath. Why wouldn’t her heart slow down? It felt as though it were about to burst from her chest.
She took another deep breath. Whatever it was, it would pass. Anyway, her stomach felt strangely empty—perhaps some food would mellow things out. With a wave of her hand a vine of grapes bloomed next to her. Her wrists pricked.
Odd. None of these feelings felt familiar and she had experienced a couple of illnesses before. Oh, she couldn’t afford to get sick now. With a thumping heart, she grabbed a handful of grapes and wolfed them down.
As soon as they hit her stomach, her stomach heaved. She barely had time to pull her hair out of her face as she became violently sick on the grass.
Breathing hard, she wiped her mouth off and stood up. A wave of dizziness overtook her. She stumbled slightly, her heart growing louder.
Sweat rolled down her forehead despite the morning chill. What was going on? She had to…she had to…do something…
Kiethara could barely think. Her stomach growled fiercely as she tried to tell it that she could not eat. She was dizzy, but after she felt her forehead again, she knew she didn’t have a fever. Her heart would not stop its frantic beating, even though she hardly dared to move. It felt as though she was going to explode!
She was going to die.
Fear flooded her body as her heartbeat accelerated. The lake. The center of the forest. She needed to get there. That was exactly what she needed. Something inside her told her that it was the only thing that could help her.
She pushed herself into the air. As soon as she did, however, her heart took off like a galloping horse and her wrists burned with a white hot pain that traveled down the length of her arms.
She fell back onto the ground. Groaning, she pulled herself back up. She had to walk?
Each step felt alien to her. For some reason, she couldn’t stop from expelling magic. Every time she did, though, it hurt.
Every tree she passed thickened, every blade of grass lengthened. Behind her, there was a trail of white roses.
Halfway there her vision flickered colors, first white, and then gold. When it returned, she found herself on the ground.
Fear. It obliterated everything else. She didn’t even register the fact that she was crawling on her hands and knees, with her heart beating so fast it was making her quiver from head to toe. All she wanted was for it to end. She wanted to black out.
Finally, she crawled into the center of the forest.
Aaron appeared just as she had hoped he would. His atmosphere was so calm…Kiethara looked up at him with wide and crazed eyes, her hair matted down on her face by sweat.
“Relax, Kiethara, you will not be harmed,” Aaron said in a soothing voice.
Kiethara stared up at him in complete bewilderment.
“It isn’t going to kill you,” he said simply.
“What?!” she shrieked at him. Her hands exploded into flames—how could he act so cryptic now, when she was in so much pain?—and more agony shot down her arms. She shuddered violently.
“The lake, Kiethara, go to the lake,” he ordered.
She certainly didn’t need to be told twice. She dragged herself towards the glimmering surface of the water, nothing but pure desperation keeping her moving.
Kiethara threw herself into the water and, as soon as she did, she wished she hadn’t.
Magic—she did not know how she knew what it was—seemed to grab hold of her. With a silent scream issuing from her mouth in a torrent of bubbles, it dragged her down to the bottom of the lake. It forced her into a kneeling position right before the giant stone that described all the elements, looming high over the graves.
The worst part of it was that she could not breathe.
She could not move. She could not expand her chest or open her mouth in order to suck in the pure water of the guardian’s lake. She could not close her eyes; she could not call for help. All she could do was stare up at the stone she had been placed before, feeling herself expel countless amounts of magic. Pain continuously shot up her arms.
Aaron appeared in front of her, his manifestation sending rage rolling down her spine. She wished she could glare, or change her expression in anyway, but she could only stare up at him too. She was helpless in this pitiful state.
“Kiethara, relax,” Aaron said. He kneeled down in front of her and wiped something from her cheek. Tears were leaking out of her eyes and into the water around her. “This is all part of the process.”
The process? Kiethara’s mind spun wildly. She was not breathing, but she had not died yet. Her heart was racing at a speed that should have killed her by now. She could not speak, or twitch, or even flinch.
“Remember a few weeks ago, how I told you that much would be revealed to you in a short time? Well, the day has come, Kiethara. It is the sixteenth anniversary of your birth.”
If she would have been able to react, her eyes would have widened and she would have gasped. Her heart might have quickened, but at this point, it was already far ahead of any reaction she may have had. All she could do was stare up at him blankly.
In her mind, however, things were slowing starting to fall into place. The voice in her dreams had said happy birthday. But why was all this happening just because she had turned sixteen? She remembered most of her other birthdays and they had all been uneventful. Aaron had always wished her a happy day, allowing her to spend an extra hour in the guardian’s lake. It was something she had never gotten to do. He called it an abuse of its power.
This was certainly a special occasion, then.
“You have yet to realize what truly makes a guardian a guardian. I have told you certain powers that we have that others do not—your shield, for example. Invisibility, for another. Yet there is one factor, one ability, which has made us much more powerful than any other and has allowed us to protect the forest invincibly. No one else in the world, though, knows we have this power. Except, of course, for Gandador.
Of course? Was Gandador allowed to know every secret of the forest, no questions asked?
“Your mother told him almost everything,” he said in despair, answering her question. “That is one of the reasons why he is one of the forest’s most formidable opponents. Don’t get me wrong, I do not hate your mother, but she caused her daughter many unnecessary problems. If only I had been there…”
Anger flared up inside Kiethara. Inwardly, she thrashed against her invisible bindings, but she could not move an inch. How could he talk about her mother that way? How could he keep her tied up like this with no explanation and then insult her to her face? She was spoiled with his love, but now she hated him. She loathed him for putting her in this position. She did not want to feel helpless! She did not want to be at Aaron’s mercy! He pride swelled inside her, trapped, just as she was.
With all of those emotions raging inside of her, Kiethara half expected for some new power to free her. She expected some dramatic explosion to take place, some hidden reserve of strength to find her. It always did. But nothing happened besides an increased pain in her arms.
“Relax!” Aaron ordered. “I know this is strange and I know this is frustrating, but you have to trust me. I don’t want to put you through any unnecessary pain.”
He said the last line with certain tenderness. If she could look up at him in surprise, she
“I don’t blame your mother, Kiethara. Pointing fingers gets you as far as self-pity does. But we are off topic as we usually are, and far beyond the point. I must explain.
“As I was saying, your sixteenth birthday is a significant event for every guardian. You will forge a connection between you and the forest so powerful that the edges of your identity and its own will be blurred. You will be able to sense anything and everything in this forest, including anybody who enters it. Once you practice, you will be able to sense a lizard brushing against a fern or a bird rustling the leaves.
“Also, you currently take magic in by absorbing it. You do not question how you wake up with little and then you can fall asleep with much. You have questioned how others take it, and you have learned the minor basics: by consuming the forest’s fruit or mixing a potion. Neither, however, gives much power at all.
“However, once this connection becomes a reality for you, Kiethara, you will be able to take as much power from the forest as you wish! Never again will you need my help when your power runs dry, if it even manages to do that. But this new power comes with many restrictions, and a curse.
“First, you have witnessed what that cursed necklace can do. Goodness forbid you encounter it again, but if you do, it is still your worst enemy. It will drain you of physical and mental strength as well as magic and the more magic that you take in, the more power you are handing over to that jewel as it sucks your energy like a leech.
“Second, you also know the consequences of drawing too much of the forest’s power. It killed Tinya. I cannot explain to you how she managed to forge the connection early; perhaps it is something her mother let slip. But it cost her her life. Do not make the same mistake with your child.”
Although Kiethara could not change her expression or let her eyes tell Aaron how seriously she took his warning, she felt that he could sense how she took his words to heart.
Everything was beginning to make sense.
She reveled in the fact that she was about to become Gandador’s worst enemy. She was about to become more powerful than she had ever dreamed. Aaron was handing her a new weapon.
No, he was handing her something much greater than that.
Power.
And she wanted it, bad.
“Do not get greedy, child!” Aaron chided her. How he knew what she was thinking was beyond her, but the word child made her internally flinch. He rarely used that with her. “You will have it.”
Aaron walked forward until he was looking down on her. Her head was pushed down by some invisible force. Behind him, the orbs glowed brightly, until nothing but light could be seen of the giant stone. The same happened to all the gravestones as light poured out of the guardian’s crystals
So there she kneeled, surrounded by nothing but a light that should have blinded her, bowing to Aaron.
“Accept this guardian, a descendant of mine, to protect and defend. Accept Kiethara!” Aaron roared.
The light around them got, if possible, brighter. It exceeded the brightness of Aaron, and strengthened until she felt as though she were standing on the surface of the sun. But her eyes did not burn and her skin did not blister. It did no more damage than the gentle rays of a summer afternoon.
“Kiethara, you will accept your burden,” he commanded in a voice that rang with authority.
She had no choice. She had never had a choice, never decided that she was going to take on the role of a defender and protector for the rest of her life. She had no mouth to protest, no will to resist. But she did not want to. She accepted the burden he placed on her with pride.
Something in the back of her mind seemed to awaken. It was as though a tiny sack in her head had been punctured, and now warm liquid was leaking out of it, filling every space, staining every thought and every memory. It had been there all along, dormant in her mind, and now it was overflowing her senses. She could not believe that she had not sensed it sooner. In that one moment, she knew she would feel empty without it.
All of a sudden, an abrupt force hit her, flipping her gut in a strange way. It felt like…purity. It was definitely magic, but it was just so pure, so powerful, that Kiethara’s eyes rolled back in her head and her chest arched forward as it flowed through her. She had not realized that she had regained the use of her limbs, but now they were being moved by something else.
And just like that, it stopped.
Around her, the light dimmed down. The crystals in the gravestones dulled and the giant stone in front of her returned to its mundane state, lying at the bottom of the lake as though nothing had happened. She collapsed on the lake bottom, Aaron standing over her.
She could move again. She could breathe again. But nothing was the same.
Connection was the wrong word for it. It only described a tenth of what it really was, what it entailed. Half of her mind was now the forest; the forest now lived inside her every thought.
So much was revealed to her now. She could feel every leaf fluttering in the wind and every ant that marched between the blades of grass. She could sense that no one was in the forest except her and Aaron.
She understood the forest for what it really was. Kiethara could now see it as a living, breathing entity. Its blood was magic; every tree and bush pulsed with it. The older the tree, the more power that was emitted from it. But even some of the oldest trees could not compare to the guardian’s lake; the power from the center of the forest was like nothing she had ever felt before, and all of it was hers to take.
She could feel Aaron, for his presence was magic. Aaron seemed to be made of three times the power she had. And she wanted more.
She pulled at it…with her mind. It was like a small prick in her consciousness and, as soon as she grabbed onto it, she could draw in as much power as she wanted to.
Kiethara began absorbing as much as she could, drinking it in like sweet nectar. She felt it accumulate inside her, threatening to fill her up until she burst, but she kept at it. It made her feel so light, so high, and just so powerful. Amazing.
“Kiethara,” Aaron rebuked quietly. She paused for just a moment, but that was all it took.
Kiethara gasped as the magic caught up with her. She felt painfully full, as if she had drunk too much water and was about to drown in it.
Kiethara began releasing what she took, allowing the magic to flow out of her in a gushing torrent. Seaweed sprouted up from the bottom of the lake, rippling out from her in a wave. Flowers bloomed, most of them, for some reason, surrounding her mother’s grave. She used magic in every way she could and she felt nothing but relief when the feeling of being overwhelmed gradually dissipated. Even after getting rid of the extraneous, she still felt glorious. She had never had this amount of power.
“Kiethara,” Aaron said again. She refocused on him with wide eyes.
“Rise.”
She stood up. A power thrummed in her limbs, giving her the feeling that she could run a thousand miles and not grow weary. Standing there, still, was almost impossible.
“Aaron,” she whispered. She looked at him in awe. “I had no idea.”
Aaron chuckled. “Let us return to the surface.”
Kiethara didn’t even have a chance to think about it; she simply shot out of the water. As soon as she broke out of the lake, she lost all restraint.
Kiethara could not recall a time when she had flown faster. The wind whipped at her so hard that her skin turned pink and her eyes watered enough to call for tears. But she could not stop. She pulled herself up and went completely vertical, arms spread as wide as the grin on her face.
She then pulled herself into a nose dive. Her power was so much, her thoughts so inundated, that she decided to take the risk. She let her grip on her power go.
She was free falling.
She felt alive, more alive than ever before. Adrenaline coursed throughout her entire body, setting her senses on fire. At the last possible second, she caught hersel
She flew back to Aaron slowly, catching her breath before landing before him.
“Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I had to.”
“I understand, Kiethara,” he chuckled. “The power must feel immense; however, you must exercise caution. This killed Tinya, remember. I also want to mention the few holes this connection has.”
“Holes?”
“Gandador and Sinsenta can appear at any place, at any time. Although you can now sense anything in the forest, you won’t have much warning against those two. You sense presences by magic, too, Kiethara, and although everything has magic, even people who do not use it, it can be present in small amounts. It will take some practice to be able to sense something so dim.”
“How do they reappear like that?” she asked.
“Hopefully, I will be able to teach you that after I teach you everything else. I don’t think you should take on more than what you have been burdened with today. Get used to it.”
Kiethara realized that she had been dismissed. She turned and began to walk away.
“Kiethara?” Aaron called.
“Yes?”
“Happy birthday.”