With her staff for support and her arm cradled in the impromptu sling I’d fashioned for her from my shirt, Lyren strode out of the cave with purpose. My internal clock was completely out of whack from our time inside the cave, so it could have been early morning or late afternoon for all I knew. Unfortunately, the moment we stepped out of the rocky crevice, my brain went into sensory overload.

  At first, I thought I was just being a big baby about walking into the sunlight after spending so much time in the dark cave. But it didn’t take long to figure out that it wasn’t just the brightness. It was everything. My eyes felt like they would pop inside my skull from the blinding lights and colors of the Glimmerwood. The foliage of the forest was filled with a million different shades, which should have been pretty. Instead, it was an assault on my eyes that threatened to bring me to my knees.

  Apparently my physical body wasn’t the only thing that had changed in the transformation. My senses had been heightened to the point that they were screaming warnings at me from every direction.

  A cricket chirping fifty yards away sounded like a jackhammer. Every flap of a bird’s wings sounded like a gunshot. And the smells… let's just say the "scent of nature" isn't pleasant when you can almost taste the individual components of rot, feces, insect pheromones, and the metallic tang of blood, in the air with every breath.

  It was too much. It was a sensory flashbang grenade that wouldn't end.

  The world wobbled, and gravity seemed to quit on me. I slammed into the trunk of a small tree, clutching it like a drunk clinging to a lamppost.

  “Myles, what is it?” Lyren’s voice wasn’t loud, but to me, it pierced my skull like an ice pick. I flinched, my teeth clacking together.

  I squeezed my palms over my ears. “Everything… Too much. Why is everything so loud?”

  Lyren didn't speak again, thank god. She sent a wave of empathy through our connection, a silent, cool sensation that didn't hurt like words would have. With gentle fingers, she pried my hands away from my ears.

  "The changes from Nyxora’s magic seems to be amplifying your senses," she whispered, her voice barely a breath, yet it still echoed in my head. “You were probably in a battle frenzy before. The high of adrenaline helped you focus but as soon as you were no longer in danger your mind started letting everything in at once.”

  I just nodded. If I spoke I was afraid I might vomit.

  "Myles.” She held my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her. “Focus. Filter it out. Look at my eyes. Nothing exists here except you and me. Ignore the birds and the leaves rustling. Just focus on my voice."

  I did what she asked, mostly because I didn't have a better plan and my brain felt like it was about to unravel, like pulling a string and watching a sweater come apart. I stared into her emerald eyes, using them as an anchor.

  God she is beautiful.

  Slowly, the roar of the forest dialed down from 'sitting under a jet engine' to 'standing in the middle of a busy intersection.' It was still agonizing. Every time I blinked, my new senses fought back, demanding I pay attention to the movement of a squirrel-like creature hundreds of feet away or some other mundane thing. But Lyren had saint-like patience. She helped me to a stone where she sat with me for what felt like hours, but in reality it was probably only a few minutes.

  “Good,” Lyren murmured. “Don’t fight your body. It’s trying to protect you. You have to let it. These senses are a part of who you are now. Take a deep breath and bring them under your control one at a time.”

  That was easier said than done. My head was pounding, making it hard to think clearly. I tried to follow Lyren’s instructions but it was like solving a rubik's cube while a dozen people were throwing rocks at you.

  “Tell yourself that you don't need to focus on each and every thing you hear or see. Accept it all but pick one thing to be an anchor to you until everything else just becomes background noise.”

  A sense of focus settled over me that I could feel came from the Eye. I need to come up with a better name for it than that, I thought. But now was not a good time.

  The sense of focus help to narrow the flood of scents to distinct notes in my close proximity; the musty scent of moss from the stone I was sitting on, the woody bark of the enormous silver tree next to us, the scent of sweat and dried blood coming from Lyren, and finally the unfortunate realization that I was in desperate need of a shower.

  When I finally dared to open my eyes, the piercing light was still painful but more manageable now. I slowly looked around, seeing the forest blazing with millions of colors that I never even knew existed.

  “I’m…I’ll be ok now I think,” I rasped, my throat feeling like I’d swallowed a handful of gravel.

  Lyren smiled, and the curve of her lips made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with magic. “I’m glad. You’ll get better at controlling it with practice.”

  “Do you think you can continue walking if you hold onto me? It’s early, but we have a ways to go to get out of the Glimmerwood by nightfall.”

  “I think so,” I lied. She reached for my hand, pulling me to my feet. Wobbling, I caught myself on her shoulder but luckily it wasn’t her injured one.

  Oh fuck. Please don’t let me throw up on the gorgeous elf princess.

  The forest floor crunched beneath our feet, a sound that still made me wince with every step for what felt like miles. Lyren's fingers remained intertwined with mine, sometimes giving a reassuring squeeze when I flinched at a bird call or some other noise that triggered my senses. The reassurance of her hand in mine was the only thing that kept me from curling into a ball on the forest floor for that first hour we travelled.

  When the worst of the assault on my senses finally subsided, I reluctantly slipped my fingers from hers.

  "I’m okay now," I said, regretting the loss of her warmth immediately. “I think I’ve got the volume knob turned down to a manageable level now.”

  Lyren leaned her staff against a tree and tucked a copper strand behind her pointed ear with her good hand. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple. "There should be a stream a few hundred paces ahead," she said, patting the flat waterskin at her hip. "We can refill. The water is less than a half leg deep, but we should be able to wash off at least some of this filth."

  Like everything else I’d forced the sound of the water into the background noise, dismissing it as just another painful annoyance but now that she mentioned it I was able to easily distinguish the slow trickling sound of the stream ahead. As soon as I did the thirst hit me. My tongue felt like sandpaper. Somehow I’d managed to find my water bottle after it had ripped free of my belt loop during my fight but it was empty. I’d wanted to refill it from the underground spring but by the time I remembered the spring had been tainted.

  Lyren led me to what she generously called a stream. It looked more like a rainwater rill to me, the water muddy and flowing through the forest taking the path of least resistance. A week ago, I wouldn't have let a dog drink from this. Now? It might as well be the kind of water you’d pay twelve dollars a bottle for at a fancy restaurant. High standards are the first thing to go when your throat feels like you've been gargling razor blades.

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  I unclipped the dented water bottle from my belt, filled it in the slow trickle of water, and drained it in one long pull. The liquid had the lingering flavors of dirt and minerals, and it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

  While her waterskin filled at a trickle, Lyren cupped the stream in her good hand, drinking delicately. Droplets clung to her chin as she washed away the black flakes crusted beneath her nose. I watched, unable to look away, as she scrubbed the dried remnants of our nightmare off her skin.

  She caught me staring at her, heat rushing to my face. I jerked my gaze away and gulped down another entire bottle of water too fast. The liquid went down the wrong pipe, and I sputtered, coughing violently, water dribbling down my chin like a toddler.

  Lyren laughed. Not a polite chuckle, but a full-bodied, undignified snorting laugh.

  I gaped at her through my coughing fit. Was this the same woman who'd looked down on my humanity only a day ago? The same warrior who stood in the face of a monster ten times her size like death to such a beast was beneath her? Yet here she was, laughing to the point of tears because I’m so awkward that I can't drink water around a pretty girl without almost dying.

  Pull it together man, I thought. You’re supposed to be some kind of magical badass now, and you’re being defeated by a beverage.

  I risked another look. She was kneeling by the stream, shaking her head. Through our bond, I expected to feel her pity. Instead, I found something warm and buoyant. Amusement? Camaraderie? Whatever it was, it made me feel like I just found a diamond in a dumpster.

  "You mentioned before, the gift Queen Nyxora said she tried to give you,” she asked, wiping water from her lips. "I apologize if I’m overstepping but what is the nature of this magic?”

  I pinched my nose to stop the burning of the water that was still trickling from it. "I’m not really sure. It’s... complicated. Or maybe it’s not and I just don’t understand enough about this magic stuff to explain it."

  Lyren settled on a moss-covered stone, abandoning the attempt to tie her hair back with her broken arm. "Complicated how?"

  "When I was inside my soul something strange was there that I don’t really understand," I said, watching sunlight play through her damp hair. "Nyxora’s gift, the purple magic, wasn't something she handed me. It was like a seed, just kind of floating around in my body. She was trying to manipulate me into accepting it. But there was a second power, this white magic... that was already inside my soul. It felt like it had been there for a very long time. Maybe ever since I was born."

  “I thought you said your world didn’t have magic,” Lyren asked.

  “It doesn’t. That’s the part I’d like to understand the most. I lived the last six years of my life, since my parents died, moving from one disaster to another, just barely getting by. How did I not know that I was sitting on epic magical powers this whole time?”

  I shook my head in frustration. “All I do know, at this point, is that whatever this white magic is, It helped to protect me from Nyxora’s ‘gift’, completely taking me over."

  Lyren tilted her head, scholarly interest sharpening her gaze. "You said you were inside your soul when you saw this white magic. What exactly do you mean?"

  "I don't know exactly what I did," I admitted. "The knowledge was sort of just pushed into my head. It felt like remembering something I never actually learned.”

  “Nyxora told me I had to complete my transformation if I was going to be powerful enough to save you. She told me to focus on the power inside me and then poof, the next thing I knew I was a spirit pulling myself along energy currents like I’d been doing it my whole life. It was terrifying but also kind of felt natural. I don't really know how else to explain it."

  Lyren stared at me, jaw slightly open. “Myles... are you saying you performed a soul projection?”

  “Uh, maybe?” I replied, a little unsure if I had done something wrong.

  “That’s not possible,” Lyren said, looking like she was trying to decide if I was lying. “Mages study for years or even decades to learn the techniques just to access their nexus. The academy teaches a dozen classes on various aspects of the subject. But even then most never accomplish creating a full soul projection.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Like I said, one second I had no idea what to do and the second the knowledge was just there.” I told her, shrugging.

  “Did Queen Nyxora aid you in creating it?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I didn’t feel her use any magic on me. She just told me that claiming your soul was the only way I could save you from the darroch’s venom corrupting you. Your body was already changing. You had maybe a few minutes left. There wasn’t time to think about what I was doing.”

  Though she kept a neutral face, Lyren's hand went to her heart. Through the bond, I felt a small amount of lingering anger but she didn’t say anything yet, waiting for me to continue.

  “So, the white magic was already there. The ‘gift’ Nyxora was pushing was this violet energy.” I continued.

  “Violet like your eyes are now?”

  “I guess. I haven’t exactly seen a mirror. I’m assuming by how tired I feel I look like a raccoon wearing neon contacts.” I chuckled at my own joke but Lyren just gave me a blank look that said she didn’t know what I was talking about and I should take this whole thing more seriously.

  “I’m not sure where the gift came from originally, but Nyxora had me pull the magic through my soul shell.”

  Lyren's face reddened. "You brought foreign magic inside your nexus? How could you be so reckless? Myles, she could have turned you into a monster!"

  Her voice spiked, and I winced, jamming a finger into my ear. "Ow. Not so loud, please. Unless you want to invite every predator in the forest to lunch. Listen, it did feel wrong, Lyren. I knew it was dangerous. And I did turn into a monster,” I said, showing her my claws and gesturing to my body. “But I didn't have a choice. It was either do something crazy or we both die.”

  Lyren seemed to calm herself a bit at that, but her disappointment hit me through the bond like a bucket of cold water.

  "Look," I said, not letting it get to me. I met her gaze. "Reckless? Yeah. Stupid? Probably. But that fucking woman gave me only path to save you. If I had to do it again? I’d make the same call. I’d drink that poison again if it meant saving the person who saved my life."

  Lyren turned away, but the bond betrayed her. There was still frustration and disappointment but there was also gratitude... and well let’s just say emotions that she probably didn’t want to admit having.

  I kicked a pebble at her boot. When she glanced up, I gave her what I hoped passed for an apologetic smile. I tried jumping back into the previous conversation. "Inside my soul, the magics merged. But whenever the power goes through my channels, they stay separate. Just like yours. Wind and... the other thing."

  I looked at her questioningly. "Your wind magic and that green energy swirling in your core. They don't mix but I’m not sure which situation is normal."

  Lyren went rigid. Apparently I said something wrong. "The contents of my soul are private," she snapped. But through the bond, I felt her emotions filled with fear and worry not anger.

  I leaned forward. "Pot, meet kettle. You're hiding something massive, Lyren. That green magic... It's powerful to the point of being scary." I pushed reassurance through the bond. "But your secret's safe with me. I'm a walking abomination, remember. I'm hardly in a position to judge anyone for the secrets they keep."

  She was facing away from me, her shoulders slumped. "You don't understand what's at stake," she whispered. "That power is... dangerous. No one can know about it. Perhaps later I can explain more. But right now I just want to get back to Velis and let the city and the sealdair know what is happening here."

  I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. The contact sent a small static shock through the bond that I wanted more of. But I shook that feeling off for now. "Lyren, your secrets are yours and yours alone if you don’t want to share them. Just know I’m here for you if you need it and I always keep my promises. Besides, you are literally the only person I know on this planet. Who would I even tell?”

  She turned towards me and I dropped my hand from her shoulder. I was quite a bit taller than her before the changes to my body but she was almost more than a foot and a half shorter than me now. She looked up at me with those gorgeous green eyes, the warmth of her gratitude spreading into me. Then instead of saying anything else about her powers, her eyes narrowed.

  “You are too tall now,” she said looking up at me, then without another word she picked up her staff and continued along the trail into the forest. “Come on. You need to…”

  The loud SNAP! of branches breaking from just outside the clearing interrupted her.

  Lyren went rigid, staff already raised, her eyes narrowing to predatory slits. The warmth that had animated her face seconds ago vanished, replaced by a professional, cold vigilance.

  I cocked my head, listening to the forest. My newly heightened senses picked up four separate movements converging through the underbrush. "Sounds like we have some new friends heading this way," I let out a deep sigh. “Velis better be beautiful Lyren because I’m getting real fucking tired of this forest.”