Soul of Magic (Soul of Magic Book 1)

PROLOGUE

Her heart thundered in her chest like it was going to burst as she ran, but she kept pushing on. Her pursuers weren't giving up and neither was she. The forest urged her on as she ran and the leaves whispered words of encouragement to her soul.

Try as she could, she couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation as to why she was being hunted like a beast, why anyone, for that matter, would want to hurt her. But if the bleeding wound in her side told her anything, it was that reasonable explanation or not, her assailants weren't going to stop until she was as dead as a doornail.

Quickly, she closed her eyes and whispered to the forest in the sacred tongue, a language known only to her kind and that which nature itself understood. “Prevent the pursers,” she said and immediately, it responded; the forest loved her and was already on her side even before she spoke to it.

Without having to say another word, a path opened before her and she took it, vines creeping to cover it the moment she stepped away. She came upon a clearing in the forest and her soul was lifted; she was safe. But no sooner had she given that sigh of relief that an arrow suddenly came out of nowhere and struck her in the shoulder, embedding itself very close to her chest. She screamed in a mixture of pain and surprise as she hit the ground, clutching her latest wound even as the older one still bled profusely.

"There's the little witch," said a man as he came strutting out of the forest with four more men behind him, each one armed with a bow and arrow. The man was tall, sporting a black hair that stopped at his neck and a little moustache conversant with men of his age. He wore a chainmail unlike the full knight armour that his men were putting on. A sword hung at his hip, a bow in his hand and a signet ring bearing the engraving of two snakes coiling round a sword with an eagle wing on each side on the littlest finger of his left hand. The engraving was one which the fallen woman knew so well; the symbol of the house of Winchmore, rulers of the great Kingdom of Cyrian.

"Nicolas," she said, seething with rage as she looked up into the blue eyes of the man who had smiled so many times at her before but only a scowl graced his face now.

"Hello, Fara," he replied, giving her a quick condescending smile. "I must say that I never knew that you could run this fast. Guess you were humoring me by letting me win all those races since we were children, right?"

"You shouldn't have attacked my people," she said, standing up as a spell began to take shape in her mind. But as the spell took form in the palm of her hands, two arrows lodged themselves in her back and she screamed as she fell on her knees in another wave of pain.

Fara realised that the arrows had been laced, she could feel the poison running through her veins even as she was on the ground. Quickly, she muttered a spell and the death fluid stilled in her body. But it was only a matter of time, she knew that. She would never be able to hold it forever. Eventually, she would lose control and the poison would run its course, killing her as it did.

But that would not be until she had cleared up one thing. "Why are you doing this, Nicolas?" she asked, looking into his eyes and wondering what could have caused the fine young man she had known to become that; whatever that was. "We were on the same side, we were a family."

"Fara, this is the task that the Creator had set before me. A task which I must perform,"he replied. "Surely, you understand this."

"The Creator has nothing to do with this!" she returned, her anger springing anew. "This is a reflection of your fear, Nicolas. You, the mighty son of Eldor, are afraid of what we are, of what we can become."

"Afraid?" he repeated as if she had just made the most ludicrous statement in the entirety of the realm. "I was not the one who ran away and left her kin to die back there, Fara. You did. You are the one that's afraid, and you should be."

Without warning, he brought out his sword and stabbed Fara in the chest, burying the blade almost completely in her heart. She looked down, a surprised expression on her face as her mind still seemed unable to comprehend the steel weapon embedded in her body. She fell to the ground, the fight clearly gone out of her as she bled onto the soil.

But just as the blood touched the ground, it immediately transformed into a green light energy; the energy of life. The wind picked up speed, howling like an injured wolf and the forest echoed it. The energy flowed up to Fara, filling her in her attempt to heal the fatal wound in her chest from which crimson fluid still gushed out.

"This is a war you cannot win, Nicolas," said Fara to him as her eyes turned green and her voice echoed from within the earth. "The soul of magic can never be destroyed." And then, the energy dissipated and Fara breathed her last.

Everything seemed to cease in its step the moment the last drop of life drained from the witch’s body and silence descended upon the forest so heavily that even the men felt it within their souls.

But Nicolas wasn’t prepared to let it remain that way. “Well, I am Nicolas, Vanquisher of evil," he said to Fara as he pulled his sword from her corpse. "And I will not rest until I prove you wrong."

They had both made promises, and they were ready to keep them, even after death.