Whispers of Sikar

Adea slept like a baby that night in her sister's bed, despite the horrifying events that had preceded. However, the following morning was no easier to endure. Adea felt an enormous strain on her energy after the nightmare that affected her usual cheerful attitude, and there was nothing subtle about it as everyone could see it. After forcing down breakfast with little appetite, Adea found herself sitting alone on the front porch of the cottage, staring off into the trees.Their home was located just below a ridge that looked out over the horizon. On some cool evenings in autumn, her parents would take her and Lyda onto the ridge to watch the sunset over the sea of golden leaves, but that was halfway around the year from now. It was spring, and the trees surrounding the cottage were greener than ever.A river flowed down the hillside not far away and into a small valley, where her father would go periodically to trap fish. They were neither hunters nor farmers. Instead,

That night, Lyda was unable to sleep. She felt overly aroused by her spiritual conversation with Iris, and as promised, she did not say a word about it to anyone, not even her own sister.Adea had been hesitant to go to sleep that night, remembering the horrible dream from before. She asked if she could sleep in her sister's bed again, but Lyda only shot her a look and said, "No. Grow up." Despite her fears, it did not take long for Adea to pass out, but Lyda was stuck in a state of limbo where she could not close her eyes no matter how tired she was. It got to the point that her eyes were burning with exhaustion, yet her restlessness prevented her from drifting off. Her mind was lost in wonder, desiring to know even more about the Spirits, but she knew that Iris considered their talk to be a one-time thing. It was like a terrible itch rising from the very depths of her soul.Just then, an idea lit up in Lyda's head that she would not have considered in her wildest dre

The first she found herself staring at was the starlit western horizon casting its faint light upon the mountains in the distance. Scanning around her new surroundings, Lyda saw that she had come out into a large, basin-like spring with a pair of streams flowing from the rocky walls on either side. The streams snaked toward the center as if mirroring each other, before joining beneath the exposed roots of a very unusual-looking tree. From there, the merged stream flowed toward the west and over the cliffside at the end of the basin.Lyda approached the tree in the center of the spring. The roots of the tree rose up from the ground as though the streams had eroded the area to the point that they now flowed underneath it. The roots then formed a base from which four identical-looking trunks extended up and entwined around one another in a twisting manner. Lyda's face lit up with a wide smile and expression of discovery. Everything about this place, from the tree standing before

"Adea!" a voice called out to her. She barely registered it as she flailed uncontrollably on the floor. "Adea!"Something snatched hold of her other wrist, trying to hold her still. Adea only struggled while her arms were pulled away from her face."Adea, calm down! Wake up!"Against every fiber of her being, Adea opened her eyes again. Though she was still screaming at the top of her lungs, she was shocked to find herself staring up at the face of her sister."Adea!" Lyda repeated, trying to get through to her. "Look at me!"Adea's screams slowly began to dissipate, her wide eyes glued to her sister's. Lyda's heart was pounding just as hard as Adea's. Just then, she heard the frantic scrambling of footsteps coming from down

Mara did not come out of the cellar for the rest of the day after that. As he promised he would, Matthias immediately took the leather-bound book to the backyard and burned it with the compost. He did not take his eyes off it until the last flames had died down and each and every piece of parchment was rendered to ash. That would be the end of it, he kept telling himself.Alyra had been watching curiously from the garden. "What was that?" she asked as Matthias began heading back to the cottage."Don't worry about it," was all he could answer with.Alyra let out a sigh, showing a hint of frustration. "Did you talk to Mara?""I took care of it," Matthias responded, not wanting to keep his mind on any of this. "We won't have to worry about this anymore."