Chapter 18: Elenora: Wild Magic

The forest welcomes me. Not gently. Not softly. But with a force that nearly knocks me to my knees. Magic swirls around me as I pass through the trees ... old magic, deep magic, the kind that once protected all elven lands. It surges around me like a tide, brushing my skin, tugging at my breath, whispering in a language older than memory.

I stumble forward, clutching a tree trunk for balance. My fingers spark with light. My heartbeat echoes with power. Too much power.

“Please,” I whisper to the forest. “Slow down.”

It doesn’t. The magic inside me ... wild, unstable, swollen from the sphere’s collapse ... lashes outward. Leaves tremble. Branches bend. The air hums with a storm that has no wind. I try to breathe. I try to steady myself. I try to contain it. But the magic keeps rising.

It begins as a shimmer around my hands. Then a glow around my body. Then a swirling halo of gold and white that lifts my hair and stings my skin. I gasp, dropping to my knees. The forest responds.

Roots pulse with light. The ground vibrates. The air thickens with shimmering threads of magic. I feel it ... the old protection; the ancient ward; the barrier that once shielded all elven lands. It is waking. Because of me. Because my magic is too wild to contain. Because the forest recognizes me ... or at least, my magic. Because the land remembers its own.