"I saw the goldentree atop the mountain. I spoke with it. And the goldentree revealed the truth of all things. These truths I will now share with you."
Maska's Testimonium, I:VII
She walked.
She sensed that she was in a tunnel, but she couldn't see anything more than a foot ahead. Her breath misted in the cold air.
Presently, a light appeared. Far-off and high up. She turned towards it, quickening her pace, and as if a veil had been lifted the tunnel opened up.
She was approaching the foot of a hill. Thin, straggly grass grew in places, but the way up was covered in boulders and scree. The sky above was pale grey, the world shrouded in mist.
Except for what awaited at the top of the hill.
Bakra had been right.
There was no elixir. No monster. No treasure chamber.
At the top of the hill stood a tree. As tall as a tower with leaves and branches of purest gold, radiating light.
The goldentree.
Tears pricked her eyes. This was it, the royal family's greatest secret. The goldentree had been here all along. They'd built the palace around it, somehow, or found a way to connect them...
She climbed. Shrapnel slid and shifted beneath her feet, but she found a path. It had been walked before.
"Valerie..."
She started, panting, looking around. That voice...
"Valerie."
A cold wind buffeted her. No, she thought. She redoubled her efforts, scrambling up the hill. The goldentree's leaves shimmered. And she sensed a presence, like a rush of air, approaching from the brink of the hill...
She ran the last few feet to the crest as the ghostly figure of Queen Shikra materialised before her. Behind the queen—she gasped—lay the land beyond the goldentree, a ruined forest, all that remained of the silvertrees.
It's the same place. This place... Where I go when I convene with the silvertrees... The goldentree was here all along.
"Wait!" Queen Shikra cried, and as the ghostly figure rushed towards her, Valerie did the only thing she could.
She ran to the goldentree and embraced it, pressing her hands against the bark. A heady, golden light filled her. She drank it in, giddy with its power. The feeling was indescribable. Hot and cold, bitter and sweet, hard and soft, painful and pleasurable, all in a single moment—a fragment—a frozen portrait of eternity. It was euphoric.
The light expanded. And she found herself inside the light, inside the tree...? She looked down at a sea of stars. She looked up at a black cloth, as if the sky had made itself soft and close.
She felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a great truth. The goldentree did not exist by chance. It had an origin, like everything did—
Then Shikra's hand reached into her chest and pulled her out.
Valerie's heart lurched. She cried out—
And then she was floating above the goldentree, the eerie, flat-lit landscape far below her.
What?
She tried to scrabble around, find a purchase, something solid, but there was nothing. She was nothing. She had no anchor, no point of view. She was here and she wasn't.
أنت تقرأ
Treacherous Witch
الخيال (فانتازيا)𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐢𝐦. 𝐇𝐞'𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐦 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬. Dressmaker by day, rebel by night, Valerie Crescent is fighting back against the Drakonian...
