Half Way: Beyond the Realm, #4

By Mia Hall

One dragon prince is unconscious. One is guarding Carina's best friend. And as for Carina, well she's racing behind an elf who's trying to get her to use magic. Wait, what?

 

Just when she thinks she's getting things figured out, one dragon prince has locked the other in the dungeons.

 

Carina demands answers.

 

Ever tried demanding answers from a dragon prince?

 

Good luck, Carina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MiHaP
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201214555

Book preview

1

When you grow up in Kentucky in the 21 st century, you don’t learn a whole lot about war.

Oh, sure. You get your textbook descriptions. But let’s get real. The words thousands of people died in Russia in 1812 don’t really hit you in the gut. It’s just a number and not even a very specific number at that. Plus, it all happened long ago and far away, with snow and canons and horses. So, what could it possibly mean to you?

And, maybe closer to home, the television footage of war in places like Ukraine and the Middle East can smack you a bit harder in the face. On the TV, you see smoke and rubble and hear the sounds of bombs falling. There are old ladies crying in clouds of dust and wreckage, starving dogs in the street, and scenes of refugees marching on roadsides and crowded in tents. That’s a lot more scary and sad. But again, it’s distant. You can change the channel or order some pizza. You know you’re safe, after all. Water still runs out of your tap. Fresh food is in your fridge. The loudest sound on your block is your neighbor’s leaf-blower.

But being in a real war, a real battle is something else entirely. You can’t get away from it. It’s right in your face, literally. Violence hits you. Weapons are hurtling all around. Enemies have faces, and they appear out of the smoke, sudden and terrifying. Their expressions are full of fear and rage. They mean to kill you. And instead of fear and sadness, you don’t think or feel much at all. You’re far too busy. Instead, you go numb, and you just react to a thousand different things at once, all coming at you in a big rush. It’s jumbled and confusing and horrible and tense. And you can never remember all of it.

Here are some of the things I remember from my first magical battle:

There was death fog all around me. Its baleful green light was everywhere, and the crackling of leaves withering and dying was loud as a forest fire. Whispered tree warnings blended with my friend Zhurr’s horrified hiss.

More fog is coming. The Dark Elves are closing in. Zhurr’s golden eyes gleamed in her dark face as she brandished a spear.

Instantly another elf, this time flaxen-haired Juxbi, waved his hands in the air while he said some Latin-sounding words. Immediately, the deadly green fog began to break away into clumps, and I realized he had used air magic to form an invisible shield against it. We were all protected for the moment.

Take care of Kayley, I cried out.

Juxbi gave one brief nod while Kayley, my currently wide-eyed best friend, hustled behind him. For once, she had no comments or arguments. She just scurried until her blond curls and blue eyes were peeking over Juxbi’s shoulder, and I felt a brief twinge of relief. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

Across the room, a naked young man dashed out the door. I knew he was going to turn into a dragon at any second.

At the same time, a giant pokari bird screamed from above. Its wings blocked the light of the moon.

My mentor Aster roughly grabbed my elbow and shouted, Come with me and fight.

And after that, things really got confusing.

Some facts. My name is Carina Whitlock. I’m eighteen years old. Before I found myself fighting in an interdimensional war with elves and dragons in a magical forest of talking trees, I had been a normal teenager In Louisville, Kentucky, looking forward to a summer of river picnics, stupid parties, and scooping ice cream before going to college.

But then my friend Kayley and I tumbled through a mysterious doorway in a cave under Cumberland Falls, and the next thing I knew, I was a princess in two worlds. One world was called Alartha, a desert wonderland of dragon shapeshifters. The other was Dryadalis, a magical forest where powerful elves communed with nature and wove spells. I was able to do magic. I was engaged to marry a shapeshifting dragon prince named Nyx. I was—possibly—in love with his cousin, another shapeshifter named Ajax. I might even be a shapeshifter myself. No one was sure yet. But, I could shoot fire from my hands and talk to trees. Also, I was at the center of some kind of twenty-year-old conspiracy involving Dark Elves, who practiced Death Magic and Mind Magic, to take over all the worlds, including Earth. And that’s just the short version.

Let me get back to the battle.

We were being attacked by Dark Elves. While most inhabitants of Dryadalis practiced some kind of cooperative, life-affirming nature magic, the Dark Elf sect gained power by killing and inflicting pain. So all around us, in the sacred tree groves of Dryadalis, the Dark Elves were swarming, murdering trees, plants, insects, and squirrels with knives, arrows, and lethal green smoke. They kept appearing and disappearing, coalescing from the poisoned fog like wraiths, then vanishing again before anyone could grab them.

The Dark Elves were quite distinct from the Light Elves. Light Elves had all different skin and hair colors, but they all more or less looked like exceptionally tall and beautiful people. But the Dark Elves were hairless and frightening. They all had pointed teeth and expressionless eyes of glittering, deep, endless black, like shark eyes. Their faces crawled with writhing tattoos that shifted and flowed across skin the color of parchment. The first time one flickered in front of me, like some horrible, grinning goblin, I screamed.

All right, my elf mentor Aster coached me. Hands up. Fire on.

I had barely learned to wield a palm-full of magical fire into a thin stream. But terror lent me strength, and when I held my hands up, I was able to manifest a jet of fire. I had no idea what it would do, but when it dissolved the Dark Elf in an instant, I felt like crowing with triumph. Soon, there was nothing but a pile of smelly ashes.

Pull back. Control it. Control it, Carina. Don’t hurt the tree, Aster warned.

I managed to pull the flames back into my hand before I started a huge forest fire. Aster cooled the heat from my hands with a jet of water from her own.

Good job, she said. Her teeth flashed in a grin. You reminded me of your mother there, Carina.

The praise gave me heart. My mother had been a great wielder of fire magic, and I felt a moment of warmth and kinship, not only with Aster but with my mother, who had died when I was a baby.

The feeling didn’t last long, though. Cold terror soon took over again as another Dark Elf formed in front of us, and Aster and I, side by side, turned to fight.

In this way, we worked our way through the forest opposite elements fighting together. I burned Dark Elves with fire, and Aster cooled the flames with water. Aster flushed enemies out with her steams of cold mist, and I dissolved them with heat. We protected the trees, dodged killing fog, and smashed Dark Elves to ashes. We made a good team. My fire magic destroyed Dark Elves quickly, turning them into piles of dust. Aster’s water magic healed and cooled what I heated up.

All around me, other Light Elves fought by our side. The Silva elves, whose skin looked just like wood and who drew their power from the trees, fought by alternately wielding sticks and clubs and using nets of branches to imprison the enemy. Terra, or earth elves, used slings to fire rocks at the Dark Elves as soon as they embodied out of the smoke. They would catch them in the head with deadly aim, and the Dark Elves would smash apart. Apis elves, the dyads who communed with and drew their power from the bees, worked together in synchronized patterns, stinging the enemy with sharp spears. They sang a sort of thrumming song while they fought, part hymn and part communication, as they zoomed into circles, squares, zigzags, and clumps, quick as thought, high and lo, and here and there, appearing and disappearing. Calum, or air elves, wielded silver shields woven from the air that protected everyone. They also flew through the sky on the backs of gigantic pokari birds high above, swishing and screaming, blowing gusts of wind at the fog, dissipating it and sending it up into the sky, where it couldn’t harm the trees. Akra, or water elves like Aster, coated the trees and ground with healing water to counteract the horror of the killing fog.

And then there was me—the only Ignis, or fire-wielding elf, left in Dryadalis. I shot flames from my hands every time a Dark Elf appeared in the fog, incinerating them. After a while, I felt like the universe’s largest bug zapper. Dark Elves would run at me, trying to kill me and grab my power, and I would counter by turning them into sparks and ash.

All of this sounds very organized and straightforward when I relay it, but it didn’t feel like that at all. It was all I could do to react blindly to what was happening around me. Dark Elf. Shoot flames. Smoke. Dodge behind a shield. Aster’s calling. Follow her. You might burn a tree. Hold your fire.

Reality soon became just a series of pictures—moments of time, like snaps on Snapchat. But instead of a party or a concert, with lots of stills showing smiles and duck faces and strings of lights through smoke, the pictures were things like Flash! A giant pokari bird plunges through the treetops, crashing and screaming, talons outstretched, open beak, curling black tongue the same size as me. Or Flash! Desperate Silva elf, tall and stern, looking as if he was cut from a redwood tree, firing an arrow at a half-apparated Dark Elf, but the Dark Elf’s arms stretch impossible long, like pseudopods, and engulf the Light Elf in a lethal embrace. Or Flash! Aster’s blond hair flying around her face as she wheels and throws up a stream of silver water right onto the middle of a small platoon of attacking Dark Elves, their tattooed faces surprised and filled with fear.

Years of martial arts training had honed my reflexes. Archery contests had improved my concentration and aim. Competitive swimming had given me stamina. So I reacted pretty much like a trained soldier. Shoot. Turn. Be horrified. Shoot. Dodge. Be horrified. Dodge. Shoot. Get mad. Shoot. Dodge. Be afraid again. Shoot. Shoot again. Shoot until they’re gone. Scream. Turn. Rinse. Repeat.

I don’t know how long I fought, but little by little, I began to realize we were driving the enemy away. I couldn’t put my finger on when it happened. But it was a little like having a burned casserole in the oven. First, there’s the smell of burning, then the black smoke pouring out of the oven, then a horrible period of chaos when the piercing smoke alarm bleats and the house is filled with gross smells and the dog is barking, and doors are slamming, and everyone convenes to find out what happened shouting, grabbing a step ladder for the alarm, getting hot pads to pull the blackened mess out of the kitchen, throwing open the windows and doors to get the smoke out. Then somehow, you manage to shut off the alarm. Somehow you manage to bundle the dog outside. The smoke finally streams out the door. The ruined dinner is tossed in the sink. And just when you think the house will never smell the same or go back to normal, it’s all good again. Dish washed, batteries back in the smoke alarm, smoke gone. Crisis over.

That’s how the battle ended. At some point, the frenzied activity was done. There was no more killing smoke, no more screaming, no more evil elves attacking or good ones defending. There were just shaken soldiers and corpses in groves of trees, all of us limping and shell-shocked and totally exhausted.

Aster turned to me and said, I think that’s it for now. You did very well, Carina. And when I burst into tears, she took me in her arms and said, There, there, and patted my back.

2

Later, Aster and I stood by a lux tree. These are very tall trees, tens of thousands of years old, bigger than sequoias. Some are as large around as houses. Most are tall as skyscrapers. High, high above us was a layer of leaves and branches, so thick they looked like a beautiful ceiling, held up by the pillars of tree trunks. It must have been close to dawn by then because pink-tinged sunlight filtered through the leaves.

The idea that anyone would want to kill all that beauty was stupefying. What did the Dark Elves gain by killing everything? What did they think they were accomplishing?

That was the worst thing I have ever done. I sniffed after my sobs had subsided.

I hate to tell you that you get used to it, Aster said. She had stopped patting my back and was squinting up at the distant tree tops. And I fear the Dark Elves will be back soon enough, and with reinforcements, too. There’s no time to waste, Carina. We must have a Council of War.

Aster was already striding up a wooden stairway that had magically appeared in the trunk of a tree. I had no choice but to follow her. My legs and arms ached from exhaustion, and my head felt fuzzy from lack of sleep. But somehow, I summoned the strength.

"Do you think Kayley’s