Arcane Rising: The Darkland Druids - Book One, R Nicole [suggested reading TXT] 📗

I knew he was only playing around, but I wasn’t in the mood. My magical awakening was rapidly turning into a nightmare.

“C’mon,” Rory said, “let’s get out of here.”

“He eats a lot,” I noted as we left the kitchen.

“Shapeshifters use a lot of energy,” Rory explained.

“Is that why he’s muscly?”

“No, but it helps considering what he likes to change into.”

I wondered what other animals Jaimie could shapeshift into while Rory led me through a tunnel deeper into the Warren. There were two dogs that day on Calton Hill—the German Shepard and the scrappy little mutt. Maybe he’d been both all along.

“Here we are.” We stopped outside a door in a quiet area of the caves. I looked down the tunnel, noting the other entrances staggered along the length. It must be a residential area.

Rory opened the door and gestured for me to go first.

Inside, the walls were more turquoise, though little shards of obsidian and quartz shimmered amongst the stone like fancy terrazzo. A double bed was pushed to the left—with a colourful purple, blue, and green blanket over the top—and a dresser sat against the right wall. Two doors flanked the far-right corner leading to places unknown, and a woven jute mat covered most of the stone floor. To finish off the look, a quartz crystal light was fixed into the ceiling and a landscape painting hung on the wall behind us.

It was beautiful, but they could have put me in a broom closet and I would have thought the same thing.

“If you want the light on, you wave you hand over this rune.” Rory showed me, and the crystal light dimmed and brightened. “When you learn your Colours, you’ll be able to do it without getting out of bed.” He wigged his eyebrows. “Handy on those cold Scottish mornings. Cool, huh?”

“It’s not what I was expecting…”

He frowned. “You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it.”

My answer seemed to please him. “Just wait until you see the bathroom.”

“There’s a bathroom?”

Rory opened one of the doors, revealing a closet. “Nope. Not that one.” He turned the knob on the second and edged it open. “Ah, this is it.”

I followed him into the little en suite and was once again taken by surprise.

There was a mirror and basin, and a porcelain toilet that had been plumbed into a network of mysterious pipes. The walls and floors were the same as the bedroom—turquoise—but someone had the foresight to put a fuzzy grey mat on the floor.

I inspected the shower and the confusingly modern fixtures behind the curtain. We were in a magical cave folded into a pocket of space time, so how was there modern plumbing?

“Where does the water go?” I asked.

“Recycled, I suppose. Don’t ask about the toilet. Doesn’t bear mentioning.”

I edged back into the bedroom and studied the painting. It looked like the landscape of the world above, before Edinburgh sprouted up into a densely packed city. There was the Medieval castle on the hill and the rise leading up to it.

“I went back and got your things while you were in the library,” Rory said, pointing to my suitcase which sat at the foot of the bed. “That’s why I was late getting back. You don’t have a lot of stuff.”

“I’m a minimalist.”

He chuckled. “Then you’ve come to the right place. Druids love travelling light.”

A wave of emotion welled in my chest as I looked around the room. He’d done all this for me.

I turned away, pretending to admire the room as I gathered my wits. So far, he and Jaimie were the only Druids who’d welcomed me. Delilah had too, but she also came with a hidden agenda. Rory was just nice because… Well, because he was nice.

“Do you have a room like this, too?” I managed to ask.

“Not really. I’m in the city a lot, so I just sleep upstairs.”

My emotions back in check, I turned. “What do you do up there exactly?

“Patrol, spy, protect the entrances to the Warren. Live life on the edge.”

“If the Chimera are hunting you, wouldn’t it be safer down here?”

“Perhaps,” he mused. “But why should we let them take the Earth from us? We’re just as entitled to walk it as any other creature. They won’t scare us away, Elspeth. If we can fight back, then we have a chance.”

“Makes sense.” Twenty-five years was a long time to live underground without seeing the actual sun.

“So what did the Elders say?” I could tell he’d been itching to ask since the moment we were alone.

I scowled. “They said a lot, but hardly any of it had substance.”

Rory laughed and shook his head. “The Elders can be a little…vague,” he explained. “Us younger generations are more direct. It comes from living amongst humans, I think.” As close as their mystical fairytale city could get them to Edinburgh, it was a little ironic.

“They wouldn’t tell me who my father was,” I said. “They blatantly told me it was a story for another time. Why would they keep it from me?”

“The Elders always have a reason for doing what they do.”

“Even if you believe it’s wrong?”

He seemed surprised that I’d question their logic. “They’ve never led us astray.”

“You perhaps,” I muttered, deciding to keep the other revelation to myself. The one where I could be manipulated into being a weapon against the Chimera—and vice versa. It was likely that Rory already knew, but I didn’t want to talk about it, not after the hostility I’d felt out in the Warren.

I got fighting back, but wouldn’t it just be better if the Druids could find their way home? Go back to the Darklands and fight for their true world? That’s what they wanted; it had been eight hundred years. What was stopping them?

“That’s a serious frown,” Rory stated. “What’s weighing your brow down?”

“Have you ever been to the Darklands?”

“I haven’t had that honour,” he replied.

“Has anyone? I mean, have they tried to go back and find a way to your homeland?”

“Not since we first came here, no.”