The community was real.
If the tree existed, then everything else was real, too. I was so close. My boots dug into the wet earth harder as I pushed off, landing on the balls of my feet with renewed strength to run faster than I had before. This was it!
“Someone! Help!” I screamed for anyone at the gigantic tree to see me, anyone to help me from the two Dramens who were gaining on me quickly. The slopping sounds of hooves were getting closer.
“Help! Someone! Please!” I could see a double door in an intricately carved archway of the tree. It looked like the decoration of an old cathedral.
No one came forward, and I saw no walls around the large tree. My body slammed into the hard, wooden doors; they didn’t budge. I tried to open them but they refused to move. My wet fingers gripped the handles and pulled hard before I saw the Dramens get off their horses to grab me.
“Come on. Please!” I screamed, violently trying to go past the magical doors to freedom.
Rough hands gripped me around the waist. I slipped out from them, the rain making me harder to hold onto.
“Let’s go, girl. You’ve got no one else to save you.” One of the Dramens smirked, his lips pierced, and his brown dreads made him look menacing. Even his partner, while staying silent, promised awful things with the way his stare lingered on the soaked, see-through clothes clinging to my body.
“Never.” I gripped my sword, the only weapon I could carry. Everything else I’d ditched to run farther and faster. Any unnecessary weight was now scattered across the land I’d crossed.
If no one was coming for me, then I’d just have to fight until I died. At least this tree looked like a beautiful place to share a last breath. Maybe that was the safe haven all along. Not a community full of people, but a place for a peaceful death.
I raised my sword, ready to strike, showing these two creatures I was not simply a survivor waiting to be plucked up for their liking. I’d killed two of their kind and sliced another. I was a warrior.
Just as I started to swing toward the two men, a bright light glared from behind me, like I was the angel of death coming for the Dramens. Arrows slammed into their chests, and they fell to the ground with wide eyes on their dead faces.
My body shifted toward the light . . . to once-closed doors that were now open.
Chapter Eight
I wasn’t expecting an outrageous warm welcome with banners and rose petals being thrown before my feet after having traveled so far. I definitely didn’t think I would have been bound, hands behind my back, some cloth thrown over my head, and then carried on someone’s shoulder to the unknown.
It wasn’t a Dramen haven. They would have been rougher with me and pushed me in the elegant tree door instead of trying to pull me away from it. I fought as best as I could, kicking and writhing to free my hands from the rope behind my back, except it was useless. Whoever these people were, they didn’t care that I kept trying to tell them that I was a survivor and that I wouldn’t hurt them.
At first, one of the people who bound me huffed and sounded like an annoyed male. He murmured something about me walking too slow and then a shoulder dug in my gut before I was thrown over a large muscular body.
My body crashed hard on a solid surface as the man dumped me on the ground without easing the fall. So much for relaxing and soothing my muscles once I found the community. Instead, I was thinking how the hell I could get out of here.
The bag was suddenly pulled off my head. The growl that I’d planned on releasing unto these assholes stuck in my throat. I lost the ability to speak.
The room was large and natural, as if they’d built this magnificent place with nature, not on top of it. There were dimmed lights from the torches strewn along white columns in a pattern leading up to a magnificent wood-carved throne. Stunned from the beauty, I didn’t even try to rise from the solid ground.
A large tree bloomed behind the dais, glowing from an opened ceiling giving way for the moonlight to create prisms in what looked like crystal leaves. Rainbows danced across the room, like they did from a disco ball. It was like a dream.
I searched for something familiar, but there was nothing besides the ground beneath me. These were not Dramens, nor were they like any survivors I’d ever met. The people were dressed in an assortment of colors and not in clothes I’d seen anywhere other than fairy tale books back at Mariam’s house—long flowing gowns of cotton and silk, exposing shoulders, torsos, and long lean legs. Everyone looked gorgeous, youthful, and unmarred by the harsh times of the world.
“Rise before Queen Olyndria, human.” A short man approached me from the throne.
No, he was not a man. My limbs found their strength and my voice returned at the sight of the . . . the . . . I don’t even know what he was, if it was even a “he.”
I screamed and pushed my way backward on the floor, trying to flee from the creature before me. He was green and frumpy, with tusks growing from his large fish lips. His eyes were beady and brown. His hands grasped a short staff with a rounded river stone on the top, wrapped in the bark. He dressed himself in pants, a simple white shirt that did nothing to hide his round belly, and a leather brown vest. If I had to guess, I would think he was a mixture between a warthog and a frog. His feet looked like they may be webbed, but I wasn’t sure.
Was I dead? Oh God, what if the Dramens had killed me and Tor.
Tor was with them. I’d failed him. The little green creature huffed in frustration and took a step forward.
“The Queen awaits you. Hush your screams, child. Let’s get this over with.”
I stopped freaking out to look around for help, my sight going back and forth from the warthog-frogman to the crowd who watched me with curiosity. It hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water on a hot day. My panic ceased, and I stared at the thing speaking before me.
“Did you just say Queen Olyndria?”
