The Girl Who Summons Lightning

Not far from the scene of the conflict, they found Blynn. He looked as though he had been trampled by a stampede, a still and battered form covered in blood and bruises, yet life stubbornly clung to him. Jianna, meanwhile, was wracked with shivers, a profound chill sinking deep into her bones—the lingering aftermath of the raw power that had coursed through her. While Malakor, with a tenderness one would not expect of him, ministered to the unconscious Blynn and coaxed a small fire back to life, Flitterwing pushed aside his own weariness to swaddle her in more blankets.

A fragile serenity settled over their small encampment. Illuminated by the flickering dance of the flames, Flitterwing and Malakor kept vigil over their two recovering companions. They fed the fire with the brittle branches and dried grasses littering the ground, each offering a small act of rebellion against the encroaching night. The darkness was a vast, silent presence surrounding them. Sleep was a distant country Flitterwing knew he could not reach, his mind ceaselessly replaying the evening’s events. Out of a quiet solidarity, and perhaps a lingering sliver of his deep-seated mistrust for the Fey, Malakor remained awake with him.

Finally, the weight of the quiet became more than Flitterwing could bear.

“What happened back there?” he murmured, his eyes fixed on the girl’s sleeping form. “That was magic, there’s no question. But she said she was from the Out-Realm. Didn’t she say there’s no magic there?”

Malakor was silent for a long moment, the firelight carving deep shadows across his rugged features as he pondered the question. It was, as far as he knew, a fundamental truth: the Out-Realm was devoid of magic. Even if the girl possessed some dormant talent, it should have remained a sleeping seed, awaiting a skilled master to awaken it. She would have had no training, no knowledge of how to command such a force. “You’re right,” Malakor eventually conceded, his voice a low rumble like shifting stones. “They have no magic. She shouldn’t have been able to do that…”

“She summoned lightning, Malakor!” Flitterwing exclaimed, his gaze snapping up to meet the larger man’s, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror. “The most powerful Mages can’t do that! No single person should possess that kind of power.”

“I know one who does,” Malakor grumbled, his expression turning grim as he stared into the heart of the fire.

“Oh? Who?”

“Lady Zovira.”

The name fell between them, and once more, a profound hush descended. In that heavy silence, the world seemed to turn, and the first blush of dawn began to spill across the horizon, its soft, golden light illuminating the vast plains.

Just as the sun crested the faraway hills, Jianna’s consciousness returned with a sharp exhale. She blinked slowly, her body aching from the hard ground, the rough, scratchy wool of the blanket pressing into her cheek. As she pushed herself into a sitting position, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she found Flitterwing and Malakor watching her, their faces etched with strange, indecipherable expressions.

“Hey guys…” she said cautiously, a thread of unease in her voice. Why were they looking at her like that? “What’s up?” The turbulent memories of the previous night flooded back in a sudden, dizzying rush, and she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh god, is Blynn… is he alright? He was hurt because of me.”

“Aye,” Malakor replied with a stiff nod. “He’s a bit battered, but he’ll live. How about you?”

“Me? Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Jianna saw a quick, meaningful glance pass between Flitterwing and Malakor. Leaning forward, Malakor rested his elbows on his knees. “Well, after what happened last night, I’d have thought you’d be… I don’t know. A little shaken up?”

Jianna’s brow furrowed as she tried to piece together the fragmented memories. Flitterwing had flown off, she remembered that much, and Malakor had charged after him. Then she and Blynn were running, thankfully at a pace far more manageable than the one Malakor had set earlier. Then, the ambush. They were swarmed by short, green-skinned figures in crude armor—Aelvin, she now knew. Blynn had tried to fight them off with his horns and fists, but a pair of massive Troggs had blindsided him. They had dragged him from her sight, but the sickening sounds of the impacts had made her flinch with every blow. An Aelvin had forced her to her knees, the cold, flat blade of a dagger pressed against her throat, hissing at her to stay still until ‘the Demon’ returned. After that, everything dissolved into a blur. The last clear image she had was a flash of vibrant green—wings, maybe hair?—as Flitterwing dropped down in front of her.

“I… I don’t remember all of it,” Jianna confessed, her voice small. “I think I passed out when you guys came back. You saved us, right?”

Another of those swift, silent glances was exchanged between Malakor and Flitterwing. A spark of irritation pierced her confusion. “What is with you two?”

Malakor sat back on his haunches. “Yeah,” he said finally. “That’s what happened.”

A gut feeling told Jianna they were hiding something important, but the truth remained shrouded in the fog of her missing memories, just beyond her reach.

Her gaze shifted to Flitterwing. Then she did a double-take. He had undone his customary braid, and the ornate metal weight that usually adorned its end now rested on the ground beside him. For the moment, his hair cascaded around his face and shoulders like a silent, green waterfall, suggesting he had just finished brushing it out. It was so long that even as he sat, its ends just brushed the ground, making him seem taller than both Blynn and Malakor.

“Uh… Nice hair,” Jianna said with genuine admiration. It looked impossibly silky and fell stick-straight, the way she’d always wished her own kinky, wavy mess would behave. With his knees drawn up and his glittering wings folded behind him, he looked like a delicate fairy statuette from a fantasy catalog—albeit, with his feminine features, one of the female ones.

“Thank you,” Flitterwing grinned, though the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, leaving a hollowness there. “I’m rather fond of it, if you’ll permit a moment of vanity. It’s a terrible nuisance to fight with it loose, though, and if you fly with it down, you spend hours brushing out the knots.”

“Why don’t ye just cut it?” Malakor grunted, running a hand through his own shaggy, dark hair.

Flitterwing looked appalled. “What? Never! It took me ages to get it this long. I’m not starting over.”

“‘Ain’t’ isn’t a word,” Jianna corrected automatically, digging into her pack to retrieve a strip of jerky left over from the bounty of the generous villagers from whom they had stolen.

Flitterwing gave her a curious look. “If it isn’t a word, why do people say it?”

“Because… well… it’s not in the dictionary!” She saw no reason to explain that it was, in fact, used colloquially.

“Dictionary?” Flitterwing and Malakor said in unison. “What’s that?” Malakor asked.

“It’s a book that lists all the words in a language and tells you what they mean.”

Malakor snorted in derision, and Flitterwing looked equally skeptical. “What kind of foolishness is that? There are far too many words to list them all, let alone define them.”

“Indeed,” Flitterwing agreed, his long fingers beginning to expertly re-braid his hair, weaving the emerald strands together. “You could fill several great tomes with the Fey tongue alone.”

“It’s just for English,” Jianna clarified. “I don’t know, maybe other languages have them too. I only know English.”

“English?”

“Yes. English.” They gave her blank stares. “You know… the language we’re speaking right now?”

Malakor shook his head slowly. “We call this the Trade Tongue, girl. I don’t know how it is on your world. Every race learns it from childhood so we can all understand one another.”

Jianna contemplated this for a moment, the scope of this world widening yet again. Just how many other races are there? I know Human, Fey, Demon, Satyri, Troggs, and whatever those little Aelvin things were. And they all speak this language?

Malakor nodded grimly, as if reading her thoughts. “They do. And there are more than the few you’ve named. There are the great Drakes, the Orks, the Wisps, the Dwarves in their mountain halls, the river-dwelling Kappan, the Merfolk of the seas, and the Dryads in their groves.”

“Okay, okay, never mind!” Jianna cried, throwing her hands up. “Forget I asked…”

She was cut off by a sharp hiss of pain that made them all jump. They turned to see Blynn beginning to stir, his face contorted in a deep frown.

In an instant, Flitterwing was at the Satyri’s side, a gentle hand on his shoulder to keep him from moving too much. “Easy now,” he murmured. “You were hurt pretty badly. You shouldn’t be moving around.”

“That’s the last damn time I try to fight Troggs…” Blynn’s voice was strained and raw, yet it seemed to possess a deeper, more resonant quality than his usual quiet tone.

Watching Flitterwing check Blynn’s bandages, re-securing one that had come loose, Jianna felt a cold wave of shame wash over her, settling like a stone in her stomach. He wouldn’t be this hurt if not for her, if she hadn’t been so useless, so helpless. This was the price he paid for his attempt to protect her.