Peach Bloomshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Peach Bloomshade had lost three days last week, and she meant to make the sorcerer pay for every hour. The curse ran in her blood, laid on her mother's line before Peach was born. It got worse each generation. Her hands went numb first. Now she blacked out for days, waking with her dead grandmother's cracked butterfly clip placed on her pillow, facing the door. She wanted the sorcerer who did this. She wanted to shatter his obsidian staff. But first she needed someone who had been close to the blight and lived. Everyone who reached its heart never came back. She found the shop by the smell of dried herbs. A moss-covered cottage sat in the trees, a swirl of magic drifting past its lanterns. Inside, jars and blades lined the walls. A big elf stood at the counter, sorting rope by feel. He was taller than any elf she'd met, built like a woodcutter, blond hair loose. Blue eyes tracked her when she came in. "You've been near it," she said. "The blight. I can smell the rot on your boots." He didn't flinch. "My grove. The sorcerer killed every tree. Now he's draining the roots." Peach's pulse jumped. "The one who reached the heart never came back. Three hunters. An old tracker warned you off." "Theron," the elf said. "He's not wrong. Three men went. None returned." He set the rope down. "I'm Timber. I mean to take the grove back anyway." There it was. The person she needed, standing across a counter, wanting the same thing she did. She almost didn't trust it. "You've been close to the heart and walked out," she said. "That makes you the only one who can tell me what's there." "Close. Not the center." He rolled his sleeve down. Purple veins spread up his forearm, like ink under the skin. "It marks you. It's been three weeks. It's getting worse." Peach pulled off one glove. Her fingers didn't feel the cold counter. "Mine started with the hands too." Timber looked at her fingers, then at her face. Something in him settled, like he'd been alone with this for a long time. "Same sorcerer," she said. "Same staff. He cursed my blood. He killed your grove." "Then we want the same thing." He didn't soften it. "Him, dead. His staff broken." She nodded. "The corruption spreads from one point. It grows every week. We can't march in and die like the others." "No," Timber agreed. "We need something to fight the rot first." Peach thought of a story her grandmother had written in cramped ink. Water that healed. A falls that shimmered with light. "There's a waterfall," she said. "The water restores what's rotted. If it's real, it's our way in." Timber grabbed a pack off the shelf. "Then we find it." For the first time in two years, Peach wasn't hunting alone.