Dire Sparks (Song of the Aura, Book Five) Read Online Free PDF

was a whisper, so low she almost thought she’d imagined it. His voice changed just that fast… and he did not speak again for a long time.
     
    He tortured her. She screamed, and pleaded, but told him nothing. He had blades with him, and he could make things out of fire and metal she never would have thought even a demon could invent. It went on for an eternity, and before he had finished the shadows overtook her.
     
    So he healed her, covering her injuries in a flow of sparks that sealed her injuries and replenished her strength just enough to wake her with the pain again. And again he burned her, and again she resisted until the darkness claimed her. Healing. Waking. Screams. Pain. Heat. Dark. Healing. Waking… it went on and on, and throughout it all Gramling never said a word.
     
    Then came a time when she lost consciousness, and was not healed. Her mind faded, and drifted on stars of her last happy memories… before the pain, before the quest, before her family’s death…
     
    ~
     
    For a moment, she was free again, swimming in the icy waters of the Inkwell, One with the waves in the way only her Second Form allowed. Her mother joined her, and her father, and her whole family… they swam, and dived, and made the sea their servant. They were perfect together, and knew no other life but this.
     
    Then the sea became furious. It stormed and frothed, tearing her family away so quickly she couldn’t react. She was swept away, swept under, and in seconds the dream became a nightmare. She was drowning, swallowing water, choking, dying…
     
    … and then the Inkwell simply washed away, leaving her gasping on the wet sand of an open, blinding hot desert. Soon the wet became dry, and the waves of the water were nowhere to be seen. Elia lay on her stomach, unable to move from the pain, as the sun blazed overhead, searing her back.
     
    Then she began to steam. She screamed, trying to push herself up, trying to crawl away and hide from the sun as it burned her. Hot mist rose from every part of her, and with rising panic she finally realized what was happening in this demented dream-world.
     
    She was losing her Second Form. It had almost happened before, but she had had Gribly to protect her. Now…
     
    … the most important, most glorious part of her being was leaking away, and she knew that once lost, she could never get it back.
     
    So she tried to crawl away, crying, unable to stop the loss of water through her pores or her eyes. Steam rose, and dissolved in the hot air, and she crawled on, eyes too blurry to see anymore… until she hit something large and hard, and touched it to make sure, and tried to see through the film over her eyes; tried to crawl beneath the shelter she had found…
     
    … but a spiked boot pressed her down hard into the sand, burning her with heat gathered from long miles walked in the desert. It felt like hot pokers in her back, and she gasped in pain.
     
    “ Not so easy,” said a voice. Gramling. “I can reach you even here, Girl. Even in your dreams.” Elia shivered despite the heat, as a cold rage gripped her heart in its talons. “The things you could learn, if only you would try …”
     
    She was losing her Second Form… she was losing it! The rage melted away under sheer, naked fear.
     
    “ The Aura…” she whimpered, pressed under his foot. “Wanderwillow… told me… if I wanted Lauro to be redeemed… to find the sword that could kill the Legion… I had to sacrifice myself. If I wanted Gribly to love… I…”
     
    She stopped talking. How could I betray him? How could I let this monster know? The boot pressed down harder on her back, and she felt the last drops of herself seep away into the hot sands. “Tell me more!” Gramling nearly shrieked, sensing something change in her, driving his foot down harder.
     
    But she was numb, and did not feel it. There was nothing left for her to lose. Her Swimmer Form… was gone. Totally. Irrevocably.
     
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