Ellara Brightleaf's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

At dawn the false shape was gone. Ellara and Erikku broke camp and pushed deeper. The forest went quiet. No birds. No wind. Only the twisting trees with their glowing roots and shining leaves, old and watchful. Ellara gripped her staff. The fox kit rode her shoulder, ears flat. A twig snapped. The ground split. Roots burst up between them, a wall of blue-lined wood. Ellara stumbled back. Erikku vanished behind the tangle. "Erikku!" she shouted. No answer came. She called again. Nothing. She cut right, pushing through brush, and kept moving. He would do the same. They had agreed on that much. She found him in a hollow between two leaning trees. He stood with his back to her, sword low. Relief loosened her chest. "There you are," she said. He turned. He smiled. Erikku did not smile. The fox kit went rigid on her shoulder and growled, low and steady, teeth bared at the man in front of her. The kit had never growled at Erikku. Not once. Ellara's grip tightened. "You're not him." The thing's smile stayed fixed. It lifted the sword and came at her. She swept her staff up and cast the wind spell, no warning in her hand. The gust slammed into it. It flew back and hit a trunk, then rose like nothing had touched it. Across the forest, Erikku faced his own problem. The roots had cut him off, and now Ellara stood before him in the gloom. She raised her staff to strike. He almost lowered his guard. Then he saw the hand. She pulled it back wide before she cast, the old telegraph he had trained out of her weeks ago. The real Ellara did not move like that anymore. "Wrong," he said, and stepped inside the swing. His blade took the false Ellara through the shape of her chest. It dropped, blue lines dimming in the dirt. Ellara's copy pressed her hard. It knew her guard. But it fought like the goblins, a borrowed shape with no life behind it. She faked a strike left, then drove the butt of her staff into its throat. It staggered. She called the wind one more time, a short hard burst at close range. The false Erikku snapped backward and hung in a root, still. The roots sank down. The wall between them opened. Ellara climbed through and saw Erikku standing over a crumpling copy of her own face. He looked up. "The kit knew," she said. "Before I did." "Your hand saved you," he answered. "It copied the old version." They stood among the dead doubles. Ellara understood then. The grove had not just tested their blades. It had worn their faces at each other, trying to make them kill the real one. And it had failed because they knew each other now. "It's learning us," she said. "So we go now, before it learns more." She faced the deeper trees and walked toward the grove.