Life Line (a Neptune Royal Series novel) Book #1

Chapter 25: Saving the Heart, Losing the Soul

Chapter 25.

Saving the Heart, Losing the Soul.

My eyes opened slowly, filled with pain. I glanced around the dirt field, hoping to see what had happened once our powers collided with one another. As I did, there was a shadow moving amongst the cloud of dust. I squinted to see what it is. As I moved still collapsed on the ground, there was a sharp, piercing feeling in my ribcage. I grasped my hand upon a handle of one of Tamlin's knives that he must have stabbed me with. I laid there, in horrible pain trying to pull the knife out. With each small amount of movement, I became more in pain. After the wound was closed, I pulled my upper body off the ground to get a better look around. A hiss escaped my mouth as I placed my palms on the soft and cold ground to bring myself to my feet. It was weird that the ground beneath me felt like ice cubes that you would find in a freezer. I remembered the ground feeling really hot earlier since the sun was beating down on the sand for almost the whole day.

My left eye was partially swollen shut caused by a slash from his knife. My abdomen was drenched in blood from my knife wounds. As the dust began to reveal visibility, I noticed that the tip of my tail was glowing. I also saw that we were in a deep crater that was not here a while ago. I walked around for a minute to get a better view of what was around me. The edge of the crater was covered in two shades of ice: dark red and blue violet. I gasped as they were intertwining each other in some places. I wrapped my right arm around my abdomen, feeling a surge of sharp pain. If I was not healing, I would have bled to death then since I was bleeding internally. The sky above us was covered in dark clouds and thunder began to rumble the ground.

I stood my ground as the clouds above us began to get thicker. Lightning began to strike around the crater, and it went off in two different colors to match the ice that the crater was surrounded in. I felt sore and my energy was growing slim. I knew where this would take me, but I kept my head up and turned my gaze to the ground. A light sound echoed off the walls around me and I looked around. The dust cloud in front of me was clearing up and I could finally see.

The ground beneath my feet was shifting and a voice rose up from a distance. "Nice trick, Izzy. You had me worried for a moment that you actually knew what you were doing. No one has ever done something like that before. No one since the first king. We are not stupid enough to do that because of the destruction that it causes. But it was not as bad as it could have been because you are not yet at full power, now, are you?" Tamlin had said after coughing only about five feet away from my tail. He began shifting his hands and feet around until he was standing up, grasping at his right upper arm. Beyond the light cloud that was separating us, I could see that he had made his scales disappear and this right arm was covered in many large bruises. My right arm was a little sore, but it was not covered in purple and black spots.

I felt a cold stream of blood rush out of my eyes and flow down both of my cheeks. They were bleeding. I brought my hand to my face and wiped away the blood. That hasn't happened before. When I did finally stand up straight, I got a better view of the ground that we were standing on. As I walked closer to his side of the crater, the sand beneath my shoes became extremely hot as if it were heated up by flames. The temperature of the ground was split in half. One side was extremely cold, and the other was extremely hot. There were veins of dark colors all around the ground that ventured off in multiple directions. Even I was shocked at what had happened.

It seemed that the explosion caused a symbol to be imbedded into the soil at the bottom of the crater and it was surrounded by these vine-like lines. I did not know what this symbol meant. Tamlin walked over and stood beside me to get a better look at what I saw. The symbol looked like a triple point mountain with what looks like a C connected to each other. It did not look familiar to me but with the way that Tamlin was staring at it, the symbol had meaning for him based on his vast amount of knowledge. I dropped my arms to my sides and looked at the symbol harder, thinking of what I could have meant. Tamlin fell to the ground on his knees and began to pant with fear.