hear me? Is everything alright?” Spring asked again, wiping her hands on her pants.
Phoenix smiled and nodded. “Yes… yes, everything is fine. I think I’m going to go for a flight. I’ll meet you back at the palace,” she said.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Spring asked.
Phoenix shook her head. “No… no. I’ll have Stardust with me. You should focus on finishing the garden. It is looking beautiful. I’ll try to find some more seeds for it while I’m out,” she promised.
Spring grinned. “Oh, that would be lovely! Thank you! If you can find more starflowers or night moons, that would be fabulous,” she breathed.
“I’ll see if I can find some,” she replied, half her attention on the whisper drifting through her mind.
“Are you sure everything is alright? You’ve been so distracted the last few days,” Spring commented, studying her sister with a frown.
She smiled. “I’m fine. I’ll be back later,” Phoenix promised.
“Okay, be careful,” Spring said.
Phoenix gave her sister a reassuring smile that faded when Spring turned away. She could tell that Spring’s thoughts were already back on the new garden that she was creating. Spring had inherited their grandmother Morian’s touch with plants. Her mom called it a ‘green thumb’.
She stiffened when the odd feeling that she had been experiencing flashed through her again. She bit her lip in indecision and looked questioningly at her symbiot, Stardust.
Stardust must have felt the same odd foreboding because her coat was agitatedly shimmering with different colors. “I wish Aikaterina were here so I could ask her what I should do,” she whispered to Stardust.
She shook her head to clear it and started running along the stone path away from the palace. Up ahead, she could see where the gardens met the cliffs. She shifted into her dragon form ten feet from the protective rock wall and soared into the air. Her long, feathered black wings shimmered for a moment before she vanished.
Chapter 11
“I don’t understand. What were those golden creatures? What does it mean that the alien destroyed one of them? Who were the others? Did you recognize the cavern?” Ashure impatiently grumbled.
Nali shook her head and lifted her shoulders in a delicate shrug. “No, I don’t know what any of it means. It’s your mirror—and no, I’ve never seen a river of gold like that on the Isle of the Monsters,” she replied.
“It seems there is more to the alien than meets the eye,” Asahi said, drawing the attention of his companions.
The mirror had shown them a dozen scenes, each appearing and disappearing like a mirage in the desert. The montage had ended with an image of their enemy curled up in a fetal position in a dark, undefined space. Unfortunately, with no clear landmarks, it would be impossible to know exactly where the alien was hiding without using the portal to take them directly to it, and if they did that, they would be vulnerable when they emerged—if Ashure’s sudden appearance this morning was anything to go by.
Asahi’s eidetic, or more commonly called photographic, memory slowly replayed the scenes from the mirror in his mind. The first had been in a cave with a dozen different golden statues standing on pillars. A long river of gold flowed through the center of the cavern. At one end, there were steps carved into the stone leading to an archway.
They had watched in horror as a malevolent shadow struck one of the statues—or what they had thought was a statue until the golden figure suddenly moved and writhed, screaming in agony as thick black bands wrapped around it. As a nearly inaudible hum of distress filled the cavern, the river of gold rose as if it were alive. Asahi was shocked at the powerful wave of grief that had filled him when the statue exploded into a million pieces.
The scene that stood out the most was the one that followed. It had shown them a battle. On one side was a man who turned into a dragon. He had ordered the destruction of the golden entity. The dark creature at his command seemed to be just like the alien the Seven Kingdoms had been fighting, although clearly less powerful given that it was taking orders. The dark creature’s master fought against adversaries that included a man he called ‘human’. There were several dragons fighting alongside the human, but Nali said she didn’t recognize any of them as residents of the Isle of the Dragons. She would have to ask Drago.