Invincible Read Online Free PDF

brain around this new information. She
swallowed before speaking. “So they were Folk?” she asked. “Wild Folk. Folk
without rules?”
    â€œIn a sense. Yet they were like another thing entirely—older,
primal, powerful and proud, with deep ties to the physical world, preserving the
shape of what’s real. From them, we took our courtly names: Earth, Air, Fire,
Water, Aether...you are familiar with these.” His gaze slipped to the window
where morning painted the clouds late-summer colors, pink and purple and bronze.
“They were the first ones, crafty and cruel. They did not seek to ally with
humans nor did they have any interest in peace. On the contrary, they enjoyed
sowing chaos and encouraging wrath among mortal creatures.” He sighed again,
sounding tired. “The Old Ways were forged in that time when life was lawless,
swift and absolute, when mischief presaged violence and violent ends. The
Elementals were eager to stoke the fires of dissent and sought no compromise.
They would not bend to the rules.” He undid a button at his collar, which was
equivalent to the noble toad collapsing into an inelegant heap. “They were
prepared to undo everything forged between our peoples, everything the King and
Queen hoped would protect future generations on both sides from folly and death.
But the Elementals were unapologetic, rigid, unwilling to be tethered by logic
or laws.” He paused. “Once the King and Queen declared themselves sovereigns,
the Elementals were deemed enemies of both human and Folk.”
    He was speaking in excuses, platitudes. Joy felt nauseous.
“What happened?”
    The Bailiwick lifted his eyes to hers. “They were hunted down.
Destroyed. Rooted out for the good of us all.” He rumbled like a whisper of
distant thunder. “It brought about the Age of Man. The Twixt was forged in their
blood and on their bones.”
    Joy shuddered. Genocide. Her voice
was very small, her fingers twisted into white knots. “I thought the Folk didn’t
kill one another.” The words fell like bricks between them—the beginnings of a
wall.
    â€œThey were not Folk. They were Elementals ,” he mumbled gruffly. His fingers squeezed his shins and
the points of his knees. “We needed peace. We needed rules to govern and
protect. We needed to create order out of chaos if any of us were to survive.
That is why Master Ink reminded me of my Council oath—not simply to serve the
Folk of the Twixt but, specifically, to stand against the ‘Elemental Wild,’ to
protect our world from the threat of Elementals and the chaos they sowed in
their wake.” He shook his head again. “I did not think they meant it literally —it was a figure of speech, an old saying
left over from the days of my mentor Ironshod and his kin.”
    â€œSort of like the Imminent Return?” she guessed.
    â€œYes,” Graus Claude said. “That traditional salutation survived
Aniseed’s spell of forgetting, but we were ignorant of its deeper meaning until
you broke the chandelier in the Grand Ballroom, releasing our collective
memories of the King and Queen. We had forgotten about the promised Return of
our people from their refuge beyond this world.” The Bailiwick looked heavier,
grim. “We forgot that they were waiting for the Council to send word that peace
had been restored and to open the door.” He touched a palm to his belly.
“Centuries of waiting, wondering what had happened to the world they’d left
behind, their families and friends... I cannot imagine the suffering I
caused.”
    Joy wanted to remind him that it was Aniseed who had tricked
him into casting the Amanya spell, erasing the memories of everyone in the Twixt
so that she could lead her coup against the Council, violating the Folk’s
unswerving loyalty...but she couldn’t. It was true—Graus Claude was the one
who’d cast the