Chapter 31

Gwen sat alone at dawn, atop the highest ridge overlooking the forest, perched atop a boulder, Logel and Andor nearby, her legs crossed, her palms facing the sky, as Alva had taught her. She breathed, her attention on her breath, and tried to focus. Becoming very still, hearing the crash of the ocean waves in the distance, she tried to reach the place of an empty mind.

Gwen desperately tried to summon a power which she wanted so badly to summon. She craved to complete her training, to become more powerful than she’d ever been, to feel once again the power she’d tasted in brief flashes of her life. She tried to recall the time she summoned Yarons, how it had felt.

Yet try as she did, nothing worked. Alva’s words rang in her head.

You wish to control the universe. But the universe controls you. Just for one second, let go of wanting to control everything around you. Let yourself be engulfed by it. It is a great tide, greater than you.

Gwen closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stopped trying. For just a second, she stopped trying to mold the universe to her wishes, stopped trying to achieve. Instead, she let go of wanting to summon her powers; she let go of wanting to complete her quest; she let go of wanting her father’s approval, of wanting her own approval, of wanting to be the best. For just one single moment, she allowed herself to be good enough, exactly as she was. She let the universe take over her, like a flood, allowed it to control her.

As Gwen sat there in the silence, breathing in and out, paying attention to her breath, slowly, an odd thing began to happen: she began to find herself in a place of deep calm. She found herself traveling deeper, through layers of calm, a calm deeper than any she’d ever experienced. She realized Alva had been right: she had been trying so hard to get ahead, to gain approval, to be the best. And trying, she realized, meant lacking. People who achieved did not want or crave or try. They already had it. She had to reach the place, internally, where she already had it. Then it would materialize in the outside world.

Gwen realized she lived with an iron grip clenching her stomach, driving her to always want to be the best, to prove herself. She was too driven, and it ran her life. Perhaps it was because she was a girl in a fort full of men, or perhaps it was because she wanted her father’s approval so badly. Yet in order to achieve all that she wanted, she realized, she had to finally stop craving it. She had to allow it to come to her. Most of all, she had to appreciate and accept herself in this moment. Appreciate and accept that regardless of what would come, she was good enough, at this very moment, exactly as she was.

Gwen, lost in her mind, did not know how much time had passed when she felt a warmth begin to course over her body. She felt the universe begin to melt around her, and she began to feel the universe embrace her, accept her. As she did, she felt all her tension release. She entered such a deep state of calm, of focus, that she began to sense a new feeling stir inside her. It was a sense of clarity. A sense of new doors opening. A sense of inhabiting a place she had never inhabited before. It was a new power, always just out of her reach, slowly coming to her.

Gwen opened her eyes very slowly, shocked to see that it was sunset, and as she did, she turned to see Logel and Andor begin to walk away from her, cautiously, as if afraid. It was as if they sensed something had shifted within her.

She opened her eyes more, and as she did, she knew she was no longer the same person. She knew she had summoned her innate power—and that it was stronger than it had ever been. Alva had been right all along. She had been wrong about him; despite her skepticism, he had been her greatest teacher of all.

Gwen looked down at the forest below, and, wanting to test her power, focused on a branch. She directed the power within her, and a moment later, the branch snapped off the tree and flew to the forest floor.

Emboldened, needing to test her power further, Gwen heard running water, looked over at a stream, and silently ordered it to stop. It suddenly ceased, its water stopping, its bed running dry. She could feel the pent-up energy of the water, rising high as she stopped it, creating a wall. She released it in her mind, and it began to flow again.

Gwen, feeling more powerful than ever, looked far below at a huge, fallen tree, lying on its side on the forest floor. She willed it to stand upright again. She watched, heart aflutter, as the tree slowly rose, creaking with a great noise. She felt its great strength within her as it rose, its leaves rustling. Birds and squirrels scurried out of the way as it finally reached its full height, standing tall once again.

Gwen felt an unbelievable, limitless power coursing through her, like a river she couldn’t stop. She felt more powerful than a thousand men, felt as if there were nothing in this world she could not achieve. She closed her eyes, elated, taking a deep breath and letting it out, feeling a great sense of victory. She had reached the summit. She did not know if it was the highest summit, and she did not know if it would last forever, or ever come again. But for now, for this moment, her powers were undeniable. They were real.

She knew, finally, that she was special. She knew, finally, that the prophecies were true: she did have a special destiny.

Gwen closed her eyes and took a deep breath, wanting to go deeper. She needed to know more. She sensed that all the answers to her life lay right before her, secrets about her mother, her destiny, all of it lingering at the edge of her mind’s eye. She felt her palms grow hotter and hotter, felt the tingling between her eyes, and she breathed for a long time in the silence, sensing it was coming.

Caressed by ocean breezes, Gwen became lost in the silence for she did not know how long, until finally a vision flashed before her. It was so vivid, it felt as if it were real.

Yarons. She saw him, soaring high in the sky, circling Escalon. Then, suddenly, she felt a pain in her stomach as she watched him shriek and fall from the sky, entangled in a net of steel. Gwen watched with horror as she saw him land face-first in the dirt. She felt his pain as he lay there, immobile, and watched as soldiers approached and punctured him on all sides with pikes. She felt the pain within her own body, as if she were being punctured, too, and she cried out involuntarily as she watched him close his eyes, suffering, and die.

Gwen gasped. She wanted to turn it off, to open her eyes and run—but the universe had more to show her, and it would not let her go.

Another vision came to her. She saw her father, in the vast capital of Andros. He was in a courtyard, at dawn, surrounded by soldiers. Soldiers he did not know or trust. Thousands of them. They encircled him on all sides. She saw the yellow and blue of Bandrania, and she watched as their commander stepped forward and raised his sword to thrust it through her father’s heart.

Gwen gasped and opened her eyes, unable to stand it anymore. She jumped off the boulder and took off at a sprint down the ridge, through the forest, followed by Logel and Andor, scratched by branches and not caring. She sprinted all the way back to the clearing, desperate for answers, desperate to shake these nightmares from her mind, desperate to find Alva.

Gwen finally stopped before his hut, gasping—but she looked up and saw it sat empty. She was crestfallen.

“Alva!” Gwen cried out, her voice echoing in the woods. “Where are you?”

“I am everywhere and nowhere,” came a soft voice.

Gwen turned and was shocked to see Alva standing in the clearing behind her, holding a staff, staring back calmly.

She approached him, still breathing hard, frantic from her vision.

“Yarons!” she cried out, her words stumbling out. “He’s dead!”

She was looking for confirmation, wondering if she were crazy, and she expected Alva to be frantic, too. She hoped more than anything that he would tell her that she was mad.

But Alva remained calm and merely nodded back, expressionless.

“He is,” he said matter-of-factly—and those two words were like two nails on her heart.

She let out an involuntary cry.

“How can it be!?” she demanded, feeling the world fall out from under her.

Yarons, the dragon she could summon, the beast that was meant to give her and her father dominion over Escalon, dead.

“You stand there with no emotion!” she yelled. “What is wrong with you!? Yarons! My dragon! He is dead! The beast that could not die is dead!”

Gwen felt more vulnerable than she’d ever had.

“He was never yours, Gwen,” Alva replied calmly. “His company was a gift, bestowed upon you for only a short while.”

She stood there, reeling, trying to process it all.

“But…I don’t understand. I saved him. Was it all for nothing!?”

Alva stared back, his blue eyes piercing.

“Did you save him?” he asked calmly. “Or did he save you?”

She thought about that, struggling to understand.

“If he’s dead…” she continued, “we have nothing. I…am nothing.”

Alva shook his head.

“Quite wrong, Gwen,” he replied. “In fact, you are something far greater.”

She fought back tears as she tried to recall her entire vision. She tried to listen to Alva, but it was hard to focus, her vision still hanging over her like a cloud. She had pulled back the veil, and she had not liked what she had seen.

“My father,” she added, remembering. “He is surrounded. Betrayed.”

She stared at Alva, hoping, praying he would tell her her vision was false.

But he nodded back.

“He is,” he confirmed.

Gwen closed her eyes, feeling herself collapsing inside. The thought of her father out there, betrayed, alone, surrounded, without her being able to help him, tore her to pieces.

“They will kill him,” she said.

“They will,” he replied.

Despite herself, she began to cry.

“I must save him!” she cried out.

Without thinking, Gwen rushed across the clearing and mounted Andor.

“If you go, you will die.”

Alva’s voice rang out from across the clearing, and she turned and stared back, wiping tears from her eyes, the gravity of his tone striking her heart.

“You are not ready,” he added. “Your training is unfinished. Your powers you are just beginning to know. If you leave now, you will die, too.”

Gwen shook her head, refusing to listen.

“I cannot remain here while I know my father is going to die,” she insisted, her voice rising in determination. “If I stay, what kind of daughter would I be? I would be dead to myself.”

He shook his head.

“You have no dominion over others’ fate,” he replied. “But you can control your power. That is what your father would want. If you leave now, before you’re finished, you will have nothing.”

“I may fail,” she replied, steeling herself with resolve. “But if I fail, I will know that I have died in the only cause that matters.”

She grabbed the reins and prepared to kick, when his voice rang out once again.

“You make a very profound choice, Gwen,” he said. “A choice that will shape your destiny. A choice that will shape the future of Escalon for generations to come. Don’t go, Gwen. You will die.”

But she sat there, on Andor, her back to him, resolved.

“There are worse things than death,” she replied. “Like living life a coward.”

Without another word, Gwen galloped off into the woods, Logel at her side, heading south toward the capital, toward her father. She prayed only that it was not too late.

Father, she prayed silently. Let us die together. Wait for me.