Mystic's Scepter. Lost Ancients #11 (Lost Ancients Dragon's Blood #5 ;)) FIRST CHAPTER

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Chapter One

 

 

We’d been stuck on this island for just over three months when the invasion came.

Unfortunately, it came right as the sun was fighting its way to wake us all up. Also known as the official time every morning, when I fought to hang on to a tiny bit more sleep. I was pretty sure Alric, Covey, and the rest of my companions were trying to do the same.

The screeches and yells of our invaders became familiar as they increased in volume. Then they were joined by the sound of stones being thrown against the roof and walls of our small hut.

It was the faeries, and none of us were going back to sleep.

Alric was in bed next to me, and he sat up quickly. Immediately, one hand held a spell, the other held the knife he kept under his pillow. His bright green eyes were annoyingly awake. I loved Alric completely, but I wasn’t going to touch him right now.

“It’s the girls, I don’t think we have to worry.” Be annoyed, yes. Worry, probably not. I wasn’t sure why they were throwing rocks at our hut, though. My faeries must have found something new to create mayhem with.

Great.

Alric paused on the edge of our bed, tilted his head, and nodded. He released his spell, tucked away his knife, and threw a loose shirt over his sleep pants. “But what’s that buzzing sound?” He stalked to the door. It was only a few steps, but it didn’t hinder his stalk at all.

I hadn’t heard a buzzing originally, but I did as the faeries came closer. “I have no idea. Maybe we’re better off not knowing?” One of the few advantages of being trapped on a magical island was that the faeries couldn’t accidentally destroy something beyond here.

One of the major downsides was that we were trapped here with them.

I gave serious consideration to simply pulling my covers over my head and ignoring everything.

But the thumps and buzzing sounds were getting louder. There was no way any of my friends didn’t hear the attack; we all had separate bedding huts, but we weren’t too far apart.

I rolled out of bed and slipped a robe over my bedclothes.

“The sound is too high-pitched for Bunky or Irving.” I didn’t move any closer to the door as another thought hit me. “You don’t think Flower and his brownies have done another experiment, do you?”

The last time our resident troop of reformed brownies tried to improve island conditions, they’d managed to blow up a section of our island. This island hadn’t been massive to begin with, and we needed all the space we could get. Luckily, no one had been hurt.

Flower had promised to refrain from such further endeavors. Which, while well meant, probably wouldn’t last.

Alric flung open the door.

Tall, blond, stunning, and fierce was the love of my life. I wasn’t expecting the manly yell of terror he gave as he jumped backward.

Three blurs of color came zipping erratically into the hut. None of them were flapping their wings, but holding on to two ends of fishing line wrapped around large, shimmering, green beetles. Ones with serious navigation issues. Or perhaps the girls had been sharing their limited store of remaining ale with the bugs.

I doubted that would happen.

Garbage Blossom, Leaf Grub, and Crusty Bucket, along with their weird bug companions, were the only ones who came inside our hut. More faeries flew around outside, laughing hysterically, and at least five more were flying around with the same beetle setup these three had.

Judging from the shouting coming from my friends further into our camp, there were plenty over there as well.

“Garbage!” I yelped as my maniacal orange faery and her beetle careened too close to my face. She was laughing too loudly to hear me as she pulled on the strings like reins to steer her bug. None of the faeries with their odd steeds were flapping their wings, even when their beetle dipped them toward the ground or a wall.

“Garbage Blossom, what are you doing?” I raised my voice, but she continued to laugh and ignore me.

My little blue faery, Crusty, lost hold of one of her ends of string. The beetle she was flying shot out of our hut, and Crusty, also still laughing, slammed into a wall and slid to the floor.

Leaf saw the entire thing and doubled over in laughter. Which caused her to release her bug strings. Fortunately, Leaf remembered she could fly and flew before she crashed.

Her beetle fled through the still-open door.

“I’s wins! Me’s!” Garbage zigged around the room as her beetle did a few laps, bumping into Alric, me, the bed, and the chairs at least three times. “Yous goes now!” Garbage hovered in the air as she released her bug, and it followed its friends outside.

“Girls, what are those things and where did they come from?” We’d been stuck here for three long months. Something like those weird drunken beetles would have been spotted long ago.

Alric went outside but shook his head. All the beetles had taken off.

“Theys likes us. So comes heres to play.” Garbage looked around the room and shrugged. The excitement was over, and she was rapidly becoming bored. “Byes!”

She and her two companions zipped away before I could get more information.

“What was that?” Covey stalked up to our open door. She was still in bedclothes, and her fingers were flexing. They hadn’t gone claw-like yet, but no one should annoy her right now; she was on the edge.

A trellian in berserker form was not something sane people wanted to face.

“Some sort of flying beetles with a horrible sense of direction. Not a clue as to where they came from. The girls were useless. How could we have missed seeing them before?” Once we’d realized we were trapped here for a while, Padraig, Alric, and our other old school researchers, including Covey, worked on investigating the island top to bottom.

Nothing could get off this island. Not the faeries, constructs, or our siramage, an extremely powerful magic user, Cwin. She was usually extremely calm for a grimarian, but we all avoided her for two days after that discovery was made. I was pretty sure I’d seen smoke coming from her fur.

The faeries, who could pop in and out of reality at will, were also stuck. Which hadn’t made any of them great company for a while, either.

“They could have been dormant. We haven’t completed a full season cycle on this island. I’d better go hunt down the others across the island; this could be important.” Covey’s fingers went back to normal, and she shuffled around in her slightly bedraggled pajamas.

When I first met Covey, she’d been fascinated by the rumors and myths of the vanished elven people. Thanks to Alric, we found the elves. Or they found us. So, Covey turned her focus to my people, the missing Ancients.

We found out that I was one, but not what happened to my people. She was still fascinated, but we were currently stuck here with nothing to chase down, information or relic-wise.

It probably made sense that, being trapped on this island and without access to research materials, Covey had turned to plants for study. Plants and rocks were the only things here. We had a lot of scrolls to study, but unfortunately, they were all safely tucked away into the magical, tiny black faery bags. And no one could get into them. The only thing Lorcan and Siabiane could sort out was that the interior of the bags must exist in the same in-between area the faeries went to when they vanished. And this island was blocking all of that.

Which had been fascinating for about half a day. Then reality kicked in. All that wisdom, time to research as much as they wanted, and no way to get to it left a bunch of annoyed researchers.

“You want to disturb Padraig’s experiment on the other side of the island for some weird drunken beetles? The faeries have probably forgotten about them now.” But I wasn’t sure about that. Garbage had far too much fun winning her improvised game to give it up yet.

Padraig, Cwin, Lorcan, Siabiane, Mathilda, and Marluk had gone to the far side of the island to conduct studies on ways to break whatever kept us here. Marluk’s magic was gone, but he had a lot of information about magic and this part of the world.

Our resident pirate captain, Jadiera, came into the clearing to join us. She, Marluk, and her regular crew had been fixing her ship, The Dangerous Lady, since we crashed here. It seemed to me like it had been as fixed as it could be a few weeks ago. But no one was taking chances on not being ready to flee when we sorted out what was keeping us trapped.

We could only go about a hundred feet out from the shore before we hit an invisible wall—all the way around the island.

“Did anyone else notice a mass of flika beetles tear by here about ten minutes ago?” Jadiera seemed calm, but I noticed her thick hair was tousled. She was a fierce fighter and an excellent seafarer, but she liked to be active. She’d grown up in an island kingdom far south of us, but she was never restricted to a single island.

“Is flika another name for drunken bugs? Because those things fly worse than Crusty on a five-day bender.” The memory of living through that sent a shiver up my spine.

“That would be a good description of them. Shiny green purple bugs about this big?” She held her thumb and forefinger out in a semicircle.

“Looks about right. The faeries were using them in a game.” Alric glared at the clearing sky. “They took off right after the bugs did.”

Jadiera also frowned at the sky, but she looked far more worried than unbalanced flying bugs should warrant. “I recall my father telling me about the flika bugs. Even brought me home a dead one he found on a journey to the far north. Most bugs can’t handle the cold; those can. And while they might be able to handle this weather briefly, they shouldn’t be able to for long.”

I looked around as Covey and Alric processed the information. Although Jadiera seemed freaked out, Alric and Covey were excited. Somehow, those weird bugs arrived here recently.

“Maybe the others found a way to escape after all. We can get out of this place!” Covey waved us all off and ran to her hut. Probably to pack.

“While it would be wonderful, and I agree it is extremely odd that these things appeared after three months here, I don’t know how we could have missed a way out.” Jadiera still sounded worried. “Let me see if my faeries have answers.” She had her own group of faeries from when she’d met Garbage, Crusty, and Leaf when they’d been out on an adventure a while ago. They mostly hung out with Garbage and the extended crew, unless they were needed for something specific.

Jadiera’s faeries were far more helpful than my group.

Within a few minutes, ten faeries came into range, led by a bright yellow faery. “Is do’s?”

That was Sparkle Slug, the leader of Jadiera’s faery tribe. None of them had sounded like this until they were trapped here with the larger group. All the faeries spoke their own pidgin, but my crew seemed to change it up a lot. And corrupted any faeries around them.

“Have you seen any shiny beetles? They fly oddly?”

“Noes. Maybes?” She grinned and zigged to the side. “Good game.”

“Do you know where they came from?” I’d continued to try to call my original three back, but they’d taken to ignoring me more than before since we’d been here. Being trapped in one spot wasn’t something they were used to.

“Water.” She nodded.

A green faery pushed her. “Noes, trees.”

“Mountains!” Came from another.

“Builders find thems!” The faeries called our troop of brownies, Flower and his eight, as well as Siabiane’s constructs, Welsy and Delsy, builders. They had built all of our structures when we first got here. But I’d never heard them use the phrase about brownies in general.

I doubted any of the brownies found those drunken beetles; Flower would have bragged about it.

Soon, more faeries flew in to give their opinions. Garbage, Crusty, and Leaf weren’t there, but I recognized a lot of them.

“Thanks, ladies.” I looked at my sleep clothes. “Since this is going nowhere, I’m changing clothes.”

“I’ll join you.” Alric was still watching the sky when we went back to our hut.

“Do you think this is a way off of here? Maybe a secret tunnel, like those that connected the islands to the south?” I quickly changed and fought to keep the hope from my voice.

If someone had asked me at any time in the past few years if I would like a three-month vacation where nothing bad could get to my friends and me, I would have jumped at it. We had plenty of provisions, thanks to Jadiera’s ship, The Dangerous Lady; they were mostly dried tack, but they worked. The island itself had fish and various edible fruits and vegetables. Welsy and Delsy found some seeds in a box that had drifted to the island at some point. They managed to grow a good amount of produce.

And after what we’d all been through in the days leading to our crash, it had been great.

For the first few days.

The destruction of the town of Bailinsea had hurt all of us. But we had the scrolls and other relics rescued from the former town.

Not being able to get into the faery bags had crimped things, as we couldn’t do much-needed research into the mass of disasters and what they were heading for.

The faeries were inconsolable when they realized not only couldn’t they leave, but they couldn’t go into the bags and get ale. Jadiera’s crew donated all of their alcohol to them to try to calm them down.

They were almost completely out now. I’d warned the girls to ration it, but it was a foreign concept for them, so I knew they hadn’t been.

“I’d like to hope there’s a way off we missed.” Alric looked splendid in bedclothes, but his normal all black ensemble was always stunning. “But we went over every inch of the island. With every spell anyone could think of. It’s sealed tight. We can go a short distance offshore, but that’s it.”

“Then where did the bugs come from?” We went back out into the common area in the center of the small huts.

Covey bounced up, looking far too perky. “I agree with Taryn. Those beetles are something unique. What are they eating here? I would have noticed if any plants were ravaged.”

“You are still going to pull Padraig and crew off their studies?” I knew not having access to the scrolls, and whatnot had been as hard on Covey as the lack of ale had been for the faeries, but being willing to disturb another’s scientific study? That was unheard of for her.

“This could be an important aspect of what they’re doing. They were examining the far side of the island to see if there was evidence of past inhabitants. Maybe that’s where the bugs came from.”

She was more excited than I’d seen since the first week of us being here. At first, she’d been certain she could find a way off the island. We couldn’t have been the first ones here, after all.

Then there was a week of moping. Also, something I wasn’t used to from her. That was my area, not hers. Then she discovered plants.

Foxy came into the open area, looking sleepy. “What’d I miss?” He must have been on the final night ocean watch. Marluk had heard rumors in Bailinsea that sometimes people had escaped this place, so we all took turns keeping watch on the beach. There was a shimmering veil past the closest reef, which surrounded the island.

We hadn’t seen it flicker once.