Page 7 of Crown of Flame
They release me, and I turn around, seeing a group of about five dark elves.
I turn and run, and they grip my body with their magic, pulling me backward again.
“Maybe she’d like to watch the ritual,” one of the dark elves says.
“That’s funny,” another one, with a deeper, raspier voice, says. “Reel her in.”
I panic as I’m pulled back into the building against my will, watching the vast wilderness become the tower's interior.
My mind doesn’t want to concede, even though it knows that I’m beaten. I look past towering shelves to alchemy tables, every time trying to find some impossible solution as I’m led up the stairs toward my inevitable death.
I can’t speak. I can’t even move. I have no idea what I expect to find.
I see Beth on the third floor, where she betrayed us.
We barely knew Beth.
She had escaped confinement on another continent. Then she came here to find a new start. I still remember the sight of her—hair disheveled, blood on her face, as she begged at the camp gates to be let in.
Nielsen thought she had earned our trust, so we gave her a shot, watching time after time as she proved herself. She offered a significant amount of her time toward helping the village and even led some missions.
“Please,” she begs. “I gave you everything you wanted. Please just let me go.”
She’s on her knees in front of the same dark elves who killed Aldor.
“Your loyalty is invaluable to us,” one of the dark elves, who speaks with a high-pitched, nasally voice, says. “We’ll make sure your death is painless.”
He wipes a strand of oily hair out of his eyes, then his fingers begin to glow as he lowers his hands.
“Please, no!”
Beth’s eyes grow wide, and she inhales deeply.
Light extends outward from the dark elf’s fingers toward Beth, weaving and snaking through the air.
As the light pours into her, she falls to the ground, cracking her head against the stone floor.
That’s when the same dark elf who killed her turns toward me.
“Well, you’re in luck,” he says. “See, we’re preparing this new ritual, and we only need eight bodies.”
He extends his hand. I stare up at it.
“Arcanis Hightower,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. We’ve been expecting you.”
One of the dark elves begins uttering an incantation, and my hand is moved upward without my permission, shaking the Arcanis’s hand.
So Beth planned this all along.
My hand is withdrawn, and I feel myself lifted through the air, up the flight of stairs toward the fourth floor.
“Don’t forget to gather the bodies,” Arcanis says to his minions. “It’d be pretty awkward to start the ritual then realize we forgot those.”
Immediately, the dank green light of the third floor shifts as I’m led up the stairs, noticing hues of flicking orange. There’s a series of cells against the walls, and in the large, circular room’s center is a white, glowing light. Eight dark elves gather in a circle around the center, uttering an incantation I don’t understand.
“Throw her in a cell,” Arcanis commands. “We’ll deal with her afterward. Maybe she can prove useful to us in other ways.”
I’m relieved when I regain control of my body, the cell door slamming shut behind me. A dark elf walks up to the cell, locking the crude, wrought-iron door.