LIGHTNOVELONLINE 1. Keep the ball rolling
Abigail sat up in her bed, got down, got dressed, and left her dorm. With all the energy of a frightened cat she ran down the hall. Eyes looking in every direction, at every clock trying to make sure she wasn't late.
Fortunately, she wasn't. There were still a few minutes left before classes started and if she hurried she could make it. She pumped Ardin through her veins to make sure that happened. The effect was an immediate one.
The world narrowed to a point, her senses were raised to superhuman levels, and she felt like she could do anything. And today 'anything' was make it to class on time for once. Thus began the rush. Her quick footed attempt to speed down the hall and slide into hed Mentor's class room.
An attempt that was surprisingly successful for once. But, when she slid into her class, skidding along the floor boards, trying to slow down, she was the only one there.
No teacher. None of her peers. Just an empty room with an open window.
She looked out the window.
And down below, in the courtyard, was her class. And her mentor, Simon Esbern, was doing a demonstration of some kind.
As a young woman, as a student of Luministra, as a respectable adult, Abigail should have taken the stairs. Instead of doing that, though, she jumped. She let gravity take the wheel. And as she fell, she enjoyed the few moments of the wind blowing through her hair.
And then she landed. It was a good landing. One where she was mostly upright when she hit the ground, and not on top of anyone or under anything. Which was a big win in her eyes. One that she deeply needed right now.
Because she had the feeling that she was about to take a big loss.
Her mentor stomped his foot a few feet in front of her and frowned. "ABIGAIL!! What did I tell you about jumping out of the window?"
She met his eyes, smiled, and walked towards the rest of the class. "Not to be late."
He pointed back to the academy, finger straight as a sword. "BACK TO YOUR DORM! AND COME TO CLASS THE RIGHT WAY!!"
Her shoulders slumped, her smile turned upside down, and she stomped her foot. "But I'll be la-"
"BACK!"
And so she went back. It was a much slower process, and even slower on her way back to the courtyard. And by the time she arrived, she was fifteen minutes late. A new record for her.
That was ten minutes earlier than usual. But it still wasn't enough to keep her out of trouble. As such she was forced to the back of the class where she had to stand on the tips of her toes to try and see what was happening at the front. Which on a normal day wouldn't have been so bad.
But today wasn't a normal day.
Today was one of the few days that her mentor was actually doing something objectively cool. A demonstration that she actually would have wanted to see.
But alas, she was stuck back here, and would likely never see it. Until and unless he decided to do the same demonstration again.
Which never really happened.
All that considered, she figured her time was better spent focusing on her own abilities. Those she could sharpen all by herself.
But as she stooped low and concentrated on doing just that, she heard something burst.
It was the sound of an explosion without any of the force or heat. And in its wake the class all gasped. Everyone but Abigail and whoever else was stranded in the back with her, that is.
Instead they, and her too, looked to the front. "What happened?"
Abigail waited for an answer. She waited for someone to speak up, for anyone to say anything.
She was met with silence.
So in the only way she knew how, Abigail pushed and slipped and crawled to the front. And a lot of her peers were none too happy about her methods, but that didn't matter to her. Especially, Not when she finally reached the front and saw what everyone was gaping at.
Floating there, right where her mentor had been, was a swirling vortex. It was purple. It was green. And her mentor was nowhere to be found. His body, his Ardin signature, all of it was gone. It was almost like he had never been - as if he never existed in the first place. Nothing more than a figment of their combined imagination.
The only answer to this strange dilemma?
The vortex. It sat there shrinking, dissipating like a cloud of steam into nothing. A crook trying to escape it's crime.
The correct thing to do would have been to wait for a faculty member to come and address the situation. Or go and report it to someone vastly more qualified to handle the situation. Just about anything other than reaching out and touching it.
Which is exactly what Abigail did. And the reason she did it was simple.
She wanted her mentor back.
The man was like a father to her. One who had educated, raised, and protected her thus far. And while it was true that they didn't always see eye to eye, she wasn't yet ready to let him go.
So she didn't.
She, instead, reached forward and grabbed the vortex. Grasping it as tight as she could and pulling. Pulling back towards the class, trying to pull her mentor back. But the effort was moot. The vortex wouldn't budge an inch and she was the only one who ended up moving.
But it wasn't back away from the portal like it should have been. It was the reverse. The vortex was dragging her in. Its pull was distorting her vision, making everything spin inward like a spiral. And every second that passed it grew worse. And the worse it grew, the less of her was left.
She was being taken, piece by piece like water down a drain. Which, thankfully, wasn't a painful process. But it was a horrifying one. Like watching herself die in slow motion.
And like a little girl terrified of a spider, she screamed.
It was the last sound she made before the vortex pulled her fully in with a single great heave.
Then space contorted on itself and the whole world was devoid of color, sound, and physicality. She was slipping through a crack in the world, down into places that shouldn't exist.
Or as one scholar had put it - in one of those tomes her mentor liked to read - she was falling through the Mage wall.
That ancient barrier between worlds. The only thing separating the plane she lived on and the elves. Creatures like her, that lived, breathed, and thought. Creatures that she was never supposed to meet.
The world came back screaming.
It was a roar at first. The sound of wind funneling back into place all around her. Of an entire forest rustling with life. Leaves shaking, flowers blooming, birds chirping, bears waking up from hibernation, wolves howling in perfect harmony, the not so silent rumbling of the ground beneath her feet.
Abigail covered her ears at its call. Her fingers wrapped themselves up into balls into her palms and she screamed again.
The sound finally died down after that.
Then the colors returned.
Leaves became green and red and golden brown. Water was made clear and the dirt, dirty. The sky loomed overhead blue as it ever was with white clouds intermingled in. Her hair went from a shade of non-existent to a brown so dark it may as well have been black.
The smell of wet leaves, dirt, and upturned stones blew past her. A vibration passed through her ears from one side all the way out the other. She moved her lips up and down, bringing them together and apart, and listened to the sound of her jaw forcing itself apart in repeat. The warmth of her own skin returned and crept through her from the top of her head all the way down to her feet, banishing the cold-but-not-cold from her.
Then she inhaled a breath of fresh air she didn't know she needed and held it for three seconds. When she finally exhaled, it was with freshly opened eyes.
Needles and pins penetrating her skin, carving up her nerves, Abigail rose. Her arms fought her half the way up, and her legs near refused to bend. It was like they were enclosed in an ice cold vice grip sucking the life out of them. Over the course of the next ten seconds she valiantly struggled against them, until she came out on top.
Now standing, she craned her head up, then down. Around her rose dark brown trees that hosted massive green domes hundreds of feet into the air. The leaves, so high up that she could only see the rough outline of their shape, shook with the sound of the wind blowing through their number, rustling each and every one of them.
It was familiar, like a shadow of those nights Abigail spent out in the courtyard watching her Mentor practice his spell weaving.
And then she remembered, him falling through vortex and her following after.
Immediately, she started walking forward turning left and right screaming his name. She didn't make it far, though. Her search was interrupted by a piercing howl that came from just up ahead.
She estimated that it was, at best, only a few hundred feet away. Which for a wolf wasn't a very great distance at all. And she turned around and started running in the opposite direction.
But five, maybe seven, seconds later she could hear the sound of the wolves giving chase behind her. It was a pack, she could tell, and they would catch her in only moments.
Running was no longer an option, so she stopped, turned around and grabbed the biggest stick she could see.
It was a heavy limb half as long as she was tall, and thicker than both her arms combined. A perfect tool for defending herself against a - probably - hungry pack of wolves. And once she had measured it, tested it's weight in her hands once and then twice, she stopped low into a stance ready to swing her makeshift weapon.
The wolves arrived right after.
They were grey, with fangs as wide as her wrists, and stood twice as tall as a wolf should. Their eyes, a mix of red and grey, stared right into hers.
Abigail was the first to move.
Ardin flooded her veins and forced strength into her arms as she charged in for a wild strike.
The dire wolves, as one, jumped out of the way. The biggest jumped straight back while the other two went to either side of him. Then they pounced. Fangs and claws coming from three different angles.
But she saw it coming and with another Ardin enhanced burst she jumped back as well. Then, before the wolves could react, she swung her stick into the largest member of their pack.
Wood cracked and splintered on impact. Fur was bloodied as the wolf yelped in pain.
But Abigail wasn't done. She couldn't be, not when the other two wolves were only inches away. So she twirled with her stick and it broke in two with a loud snap, but lost none of it's momentum. Instead it increased in speed like a valiant knight riding into battle. Then it came crashing into the second wolf and snapped again.
Retaliation was of course imminent after that.
Before it could come, though, Abigail kicked off the ground, dropped what remained of the stick, and flew up. There she gripped onto the side of one of the great trees with nothing but her bare hand. Nails dug into hard bark and for a second she was falling. Her fingers carving down through the trunk of the tree. Then stop, she was still and safe up above.
Below, the wolves glared at her. They growled and prowled around the perimeter of the tree. Claws digging deep into the soil underneath them with every step they made. Then, as one, they pounced upwards. Their jump didn't take them nearly as far as hers had. They only made it about half the distance and then started ascending after her. Fast.
Abigail, quickly, started her own climb. She stabbed her hands into the wood, pulled them out, and stabbed again. Up she went. But she was slow, miserably so in comparison to the dire wolves.
They were clear experts at this. Raking their claws across the trunk of the tree and launching themselves higher and higher like living catapults.
And if they were catapults, then Abigail was a slug. Escape became her only option of survival.
So, right as they got close enough to nip at her ankles, she braced herself. With as much power as she could muster up, she kicked off the tree and into another. From there, she started jumping from tree to tree until she couldn't even see hint or hair of the wolves behind her.
After that she slowed down and started leaping at a more brisk pace. Still she kept her eyes on the ground below, scanning for wolves or anything worse. None of which she found.
Instead her eyes caught sight of grey stone leading up to a short, abandoned looking, tower.
Abigail figured that if Esbern had gone this way, that this is probably where he would have holed up. It was small, hidden, and seemed as if no one ever dared to go near it. A perfect spot to stop and get his bearings together.
So, without any further hesitation, she landed a few feet away from the door and walked right in.
And it was a lot more of the same on the inside. Rotten floorboards. Old plates and pans and silverware laying all over the place. A table with criss crossing cobwebs underneath.
It was clearly ancient, and sadly, empty. But, there was a trapdoor hidden away in the back of the room. One she opened it with a kick, first denting the metal and breaking the lock, then another that sent it tumbling down into the abyss below.
She followed. Down a creaking latter, and onto hard stone.
There, in the darkness, she saw the impossible glint of shiny metal across the room from her. She pondered that as she walked over to it. How it managed to shine when in total darkness.
But the answer became all too obvious when she got within a few feet of whatever it was: An enchantment. Ardin wrapped around the mystery object and told it to shine, thus it did.
And, curious as a cat, she reached down and grabbed it.
A sharp edge, wedge shaped, made of steel - it was a sword. Perfect for defending herself against Dire wolves or anything else that might lurk in the forest. And seeing as how this tower was abandoned, she doubted anyone would miss the blade.
But as she pulled it up from among the junk surrounding it, she nicked herself. A small cut that oozed blood onto steel. And suddenly she felt very, very sleepy.