The Chaos Wielder (The Indomitable Ella Larisse, Book 2- Part 1) Read online

  THE CHAOS WIELDER

  THE INDOMITABLE ELLA LARISSE

  Book 2 (PART 1)

  ELON VIDAL

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed

  in the novel are either products of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2021 Elon Vidal

  Cover copyright © Light Age Media

  A Light Age Media Production

  All Rights Reserved

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s

  Intellectual property. If you would like permission to use the material

  from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact

  [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Light Age Media

  Barcelona

  First Worldwide Edition: April 2021

  Version: 1. April 2021

  MORE BY ELON

  Witchlight, Book 1 in Lightkey: The Intrepid Lucy Duceaul

  (Get this book for FREE when you click here and sign up to Elon’s newsletter!

  Also, available on paperback here.)

  Eclipse (Dawnbringer, Book 1)

  (Read it now for FREE here!)

  The East Gate (Dawnbringer, Book 2)

  (Read it now here!)

  The Attraction Wielder – Juro’s Backstory (The Indomitable Ella Larisse)

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  The Time Wielder (The Indomitable Ella Larisse, Book 1)

  (Read it now here!)

  CONTENTS

  FREE GIFT

  CHAPTER ONE - FRAGMENTS

  CHAPTER TWO - OMENS

  CHAPTER THREE - PERMISSION

  CHAPTER FOUR - THE PRINCESS

  CHAPTER FIVE – ATTRACTION WIELDER

  CHAPTER SIX – SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER

  CHAPTER SEVEN – RAINBOW VOMIT

  CHAPTER EIGHT - VIRTUAL REALITY

  CHAPTER NINE - GYMNASTICS

  CHAPTER TEN – GREEN OOZE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - MUSIC BOX

  CHAPTER TWELVE – HEROKI

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN – THIRSTY FOREST

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - RIDDLES

  ELON’S AUTHOR NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  OTHER BOOKS BY ELON

  THE SWORD OF VAREN

  ECLIPSE

  DRAGONLIGHT

  THE ATTRACTION WIELDER

  THE DRAGON SIGNET

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

  REVIEW THE BOOK

  FREE GIFT

  Dear Light Rider!

  Thank you for reading my book!

  Before you continue, be sure that you have read the first book in the Lightkey series. Else, this one won’t make as much sense.

  You can get the first book in the series, “Witchlight (Lightkey: The Intrepid Lucy Duceaul, Book1)” in eBook format, when you join my newsletter here: https://bf.elonvidal.com/1vifjyxtne. Absolutely FREE, of course!

  Just click below to sign up and download the book. Start reading it immediately.

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  Happy Reading Light Rider!

  CHAPTER ONE - FRAGMENTS

  Even the dust particles passing through the errant rays of flickering overhead lights seemed disinclined to join Ella as she went deeper into the cavernous backrooms of the Scorpina Public Library. It was rare that anyone frequented the dark alcoves to enjoy the scent, touch, and sight of tomes with actual paper pages, but Ella felt compelled to root through every possible option. Every second that passed was a second further she was from finding Q.T. She pulled a few giant, cloth-clad books from their centuries-old shelves and dropped them onto a table. A thud echoed back through the winding passageways of the underground library.

  Did anyone hear that? Does anyone even know I am down here?

  Only Athos will care… Assuming I’m late to training again…

  Ella glanced at the crystal transmission device on her wrist as it buzzed up to clarify the time and she grimaced. She only had an hour until she was due at the training grounds, but she was certain she would be more careful this time.

  This time.

  Time had started to take on a different meaning as she distributed priorities in a more meaningful order. Her search for her mom and, in a way, her best friend, had to take priority over everything: including her Durgic and physical training.

  Ella flipped through another one of the old tomes. She found it surprising that there were still some texts that hadn’t been digitized, but, here they were. And if any of them, even one of them, provided an answer, or even a lead, as to how she might get to the dimension to where her mom was, to where the banyans grew plentifully, then she had to find it.

  Or maybe one of them would teach her how to better use that blasted Eye.

  Ella nudged her shoulder bag under the table with her foot as she thought of the relic nestled amongst snacks she would never eat that her father sent with her because she was too often skipping meals. The snacks that rested next to a scarf that she wore when sandstorms swept up if she was caught out on her monocycle and had to take cover in the toplands in the afternoon. That scarf that was right next to the whetstone for the blades Hamit had given her that she never went without, now that she knew there were dangers lurking ever closer to her destruction.

  She gave the shoulder bag another nudge. You know, the important things…

  On one of the time-faded pages, a definition she had never seen before caught her eye.

  “Anionic.” The word tasted strange in her mouth. She flipped to the cover to confirm: Durgic Parallels and Paradoxes. “Hmm… Anionic creatures…” The flavor of chemistry and physics, not mysticism. She read the definition again.

  Anionic creatures are negatively charged within the durgic system. In reality this refers to a lack of connection with the durgic root of light, the pull to the nucleus of life. Crystal of Repulsion can be healing, though all Crystals may be necessary. Also referred to as “dark.”

  That was it for the definition, but after some further reading, Ella found that the book referred to werewolves, certain fae, vampires, demons, and sirens as anionic.

  Ella was surprised she had never heard the word “anionic” in this particular context before. It did intrigue her to see a reference to a Crystal and it made her heart hurt… Every second she spent hunting for a way to use the Eye to find her mom she felt like she was betraying QT. because she wasn't directly trying to find him…

  She flinched as she remembered him being dragged through the portal behind the Underworlder, lost to her with the Chaos Crystal, as Nerka and her had watched helplessly from the surface of the moon…

  Ella shivered and swallowed, turning her hands to fists.

  There was new purpose to her life…

  How was she supposed to balance her commitments? While she wanted to continue her Durga and physical training, the Festival Arena games and cross-world race from North to South seemed much smaller and faraway now that her best friend was imprisoned in the Underworld and her mom was still trapped in a dimension far from her reach.

  She also needed to work up the courage to ask Hamit to see Lunardia Turum… Ella had high hopes that the social media princess would know something about why her father had been killed. Did she think Sint
ila Labs had anything to do with it? Was there any possibility that another Crystal of Reality was hidden in Rohgen Turum’s mines, like Heroki Sintila had suggested? Maybe Luna knew something about that. And maybe another Crystal would help lead Ella to her mother. Or help get her to the Underworld to find QT.

  I just don’t know! There are too many “maybes”! Ella knew she should be confiding in Nerka, or Athos, or Hamit, or her dad, or even the snarky, all-powerful entity Saion about all the endless studies she had been doing. She shouldn’t be trying to find answers to an Underworld portal or to her mom’s dimension alone, lurking in libraries or on network forums. But Sintila Labs had killed Methulans, ravaged the Equatorial Forest, and the Underworlders had taken her best friend. Obviously, this was too dangerous to confide in anyone.

  The flickering of the rarely used lights over her head made strange striations across the desk and bookshelves in front of Ella. She peered at it a moment, then flickered her fingers in front of her.

  In the way she had grown accustomed to, a tiny aurora appeared at her fingertips and there was a familiar tug at the light source inside of her. Just like in the forest with the Maven, just like in the training arena with Athos. Ella grinned and flipped her digits one way and then the other, pooling the dreamy oil spill of lights as it sparked and scintillated, spreading colors that shouldn’t be in the yellow and white dust pool from the electrical light.

  She knew to recognize the way her pulse started to calm, the way her frustrations faded and let her breath ease. An idea formed.

  Now…

  Ella reached into the shoulder bag and slipped the little tiara of the Eye of Evermore Sight from the leather satchel. The silver chromital was chilly to the touch. She slipped it onto her head, cushioning it against her hair and tucking it tightly.

  The aurora apparition in the dust continued as she kept her eyes and hands moving in sync with the play of the lights. So far, keeping calm and focused was the only way that she ever succeeded in controlling the Eye. That and when under extreme stress… Like when her life was being threatened in the Equatorial Forest.

  Ella continued to practice the box breathing that Athos had taught her, over and over again. Breathe in for eight seconds, hold for eight seconds, breathe out for eight seconds, hold for eighth seconds, repeat…

  The lights still scintillated at the edges of her fingertips, little sparklers that ignited into a flurry of nebula starbirth… then the Eye stuttered to life.

  Images flashed before her mind’s eye.

  It was fragmented. Splintered. As if seeing through the many facets of the warm orange sunstone pressed to her forehead. It was the visions of other people. What they were seeing or thinking. It just was people nearby. People in the library. People the Eye could attach to.

  But, Ella wanted to control it. She wanted to target it…

  So, Ella breathed out. Easy… Easy…

  And willed it to see her mother…

  The banyan tree’s canopy mushroomed over her mom’s head, the vines twining around her body like a friend cradling her in its embrace. She swayed with the gentle movement of the breeze, the vines mimicking her back-and-forth. The entire vision was draped in blue and felt faraway, felt foggy and full, as if Ella was being hugged by the banyans, too.

  Ella’s heart swelled with hope.

  “Mom!” Did I say that aloud? The image flickered as she began to lose focus and she reestablished the connection with a quick breath out, calming herself, clinging to the image with every hope and every ounce of willpower.

  Cleo Larisse showed no indication of having heard Ella. But it felt so real… Ella felt so close to her. It was as if Ella could reach out and touch the waving tendrils of blue hued grasses beneath her feet, like she could smell the fragrance of life and abundance in the air, like she could feel the mist of pollen spores rushing through the air on the breeze, headed to find a secure place to spread more of life’s mystery.

  “The banyan tree has not borne fruit…” Cleo was murmuring to herself, her eyes closed, leaning back into the cradle of vines, suspended in the air by their cling.

  The fragmented panes of the Eye shifted, and Ella nearly lost the track of her vision, the banyan and blue grasses splintering away. She saw through her mom’s eyes for a moment as they flickered open, her poetry pausing. Cleo looked down at her hands, curling them away from her body and flipping them over and over, checking them, as if she could feel an interloper behind her eyes. Then the Eye spun away, and Ella was again looking at the dimension from a lofty view some ten feet away. Her mom rested again and continued murmuring. “The banyan tree has not borne fruit. The vines of darkness are pulling up its roots. The banyan tree’s fruit cannot embrace while the seeds of darkness have no face.”

  Her mom’s little chant started again, a constant litany that was calming, bewitching, and disturbing at the same time. Had she been alone too long? Ella’s heart trembled a little at the thought. Was she lost in a world built in her mind without anyone to speak to? Surely no one could be banished to a dimension for over fifteen years, all by themselves without there being serious psychological consequences…

  The Eye spun around, seeming to dive through the banyan tree’s many vines and up through its gorgeous canopies. The prismatic nature of its splinters was dizzying, making it difficult for Ella to get a full picture of her mom resting below the branches.

  Why can’t I control this cursed thing? Ella grumbled and took a deep breath, reminding herself to stay in the meditative state, knowing she would lose it as soon as she got too animated.

  Cleo’s blonde hair floated in the air, as if the laws of physics didn’t fully conform in this dimension. Ella wanted to reach down, caress a lock, wondering if it felt like her own hair, so flaxen under the moons -- or in the spooky semi-blue sheen of this dimension -- shining extra golden against her pale skin when Ishta and Dorna shifted their rays through it during the day. Cleo’s brown eyes were marked into Ella’s memory as if she had last seen them yesterday, and not five years ago when Cleo had left on her fateful mission. Ella’s eyes were a true combination of her parents: the right eye being blue and her left eye being brown.

  Let me see my mom again, Eye… Ella demanded, and she felt the flush of cortisol from the frustration rise in her in tune with her control over the Eye’s function spinning away. The splintered fragments spiraled, the blue hue of the dimension fleeing, bookshelves taking up harbor place of vines.

  Cleo’s eyes opened at the last moment and she stared right into Ella’s perception through the Eye. Her voice deepened, exigent:

  “The seeds of darkness have no face.”

  Then the dimension vanished, and Ella was staring at the bookshelf in front of her, hands splayed out on the desk, trying to get a tether on the world in Methula.

  Ella groaned and ripped the Eye off her forehead, her stomach roiling with nausea from the spinning of the fragmented sight. She set down the thin tiara and rubbed her temples and eyes. She stared at the relic, the sheen of the warm orange sunstone staring back. She wrinkled her nose at it.

  “You think you can just taunt me, huh? Tease me and then take it away? Well, what if I tease you back?”

  As expected, there was no response. The simple curvy design resembled a butterfly’s wings and seemed just as flighty.

  Ella groaned again and slid the Eye back into her shoulder bag. That was as much as she had ever gotten. A slight moment of hope, but still… As if she were outside the dimension, just spying inward, not actually able to access it. And always through that strange blue hue. Nothing true, nothing accessible. Always outside.

  She pushed back from the table, grabbing up the books she had been studying, sliding them back onto the shelf. No reason she couldn’t continue her obsessive study of werewolves and anionic creatures after training. Athos would certainly be upset if she showed up late. Again.

  It had started to become a poor habit.

  Ella sighed as Nerka appeared in the dark entranc
e to the lonely alcove, stomping her foot and pointing to her wrist crystal. Only her slightly raised eyebrow indicated she wasn’t really angry that Athos had sent her out to track down Ella for her tardiness to training.

  Ella felt for the daggers she now always carried at her waist, feeling more secure that they were there. Knowing, at the same time, that the best weapon she had was actually The Shadow, who was fast becoming a trusted friend and confidante, even as Nerka challenged her in ways QT never had.

  “The banyan tree has not borne fruit…” The first part of the phrase her mom had been saying repeated in Ella’s mind. That was a phrase that Saion had said, too, when Ella had first sought out the Eye from him in the Zorin Caverns. The great banyans had nearly disappeared from Methula Four in the last few centuries. The banyans were deeply rooted to the survival of the Methulans and Ella felt like she was just barely scraping the surface of understanding what all that meant. Her control of the Durgic magic and the understanding of light/dark, push/pull, life/death was growing.

  Ella walked up to Nerka, but before the older girl could speak, Ella asked, “What does it mean to you that “the seeds of darkness have no face”?”

  Nerka frowned. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her green eyes were stern, her fingers tapping impatience on her hips. She was clad in athletic-training gear but always gave off the aura of a warrior. She was an entire head taller than Ella, her tanned body quite fit and muscular. Nerka Ombra was more than the current Champion of the Arena games: she was now the Space Wielder and that power seemed to pulse from her.