Chapter 4 - Get Along, Try Again

Waking typically wasn’t pleasant for Holly. It was a reminder of her incarceration and the mental anguish that came with that.

Even after being taken from Inverna, her torment continued.

Except now, she was beaten to a pulp alongside her imprisonment. Her eyes opened. Her head pounded, still recovering from the blunt force trauma she lived through. Her ribs were also sore from the repeated strikes she took when she was down.

“I thought men were supposed to be chivalrous,” she joked weakly to herself. “Ow…” she winced. It hurt to laugh.

What else was going on? It was dark, that much was for sure. The distinct hum of the truck informed her they were on the move. She was now tied up pretty securely with some rope.

“Fuck…” she cursed allowing her face to re-meet the cold metal floor below. How did it all go so wrong?

Well, she was kidnapped for one. Thinking about it, she should have been more careful. How foolish of her.

There were any number of ways she could have handled that and come out on top. Now she found herself in a more compromised position than before.

She had strawberry seeds in her bag, which would let her ease her suffering. Unfortunately, with her arms bound as tight as they were, there was no way she was checking to see if they found her satchel. She did make sure to hide them in her jacket’s inner pocket before launching her previous attack. It was very possible they could have missed them, but she just couldn’t be certain.

Some time had clearly passed since their scuffle. Bright light now poured in from outside. They were in the same truck given the damaged state of the door. Wait-

“My hollies…” she gasped. She could feel them adorning her head once more.

“They must not be familiar with zalavan biology,” whispered Holly in realization.

It was a tool she could use, but she only had four shots to her name right now. If she messed this up… well she didn’t want to consider the consequences of failing again.

With great effort, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and scooched her way to the door. If she could get out of the truck and they were near any plants, it would be no contest. She trembled and let out a small whimper. Getting blindsided like she did wasn’t something she wanted to repeat. Another tremble as tears escaped her eyes. These were not tears of her mask, not an act or show of innocence. Holly was genuinely crying. The excitement had long passed. Now she was feeling what she should have from the get-go – fear.

If she was beaten unconscious by her captors, who knows what this Mr. Noel character was going to do to her. She didn’t want to find out.

Finally psyching herself up, Holly tapped into her namesake – the four holly berries that graced her head. She had enough ammo there for one fortissimo-ranked spell or several lower-ranked ones. Only in the Nature element sadly. It was only now that she wished she had been graced with fruits of other elements rather than her cute little holly berries. No crying over fallen leaves, there would be plenty of time for that once free.

All that in mind, she was primed and ready to fire off a spell.

But she had no idea what to do. None of the nature spells she could recall at the moment seemed to be of any use to her. Especially if that fire element was back on his feet already. Nature spells would do nothing to him since he resisted their effects.

There was one thing she could think to do. She ruminated on how many berries to burn up in this little stunt. Finally, she decided on two. She took in their power directly from her body, feeling the leaves shrivel up and crumble from the left side of her head. Now the nature rhythm joined her own, readying her for spellcasting.

Unlike other elemental spells, those in the nature element came easy to her. Albero Robusto was the one she decided on. A spell that caused a tree to quickly grow from nothing. She muttered a small gratitude to Sage Lanvi and Sage Luca that the spell didn’t have any specific terrain requirements. Wherever she willed it to, the tree would grow.

Her will dictated it would grow in the cracks created by her usage of the boulder spell. The spell went off exactly as she intended. A tree sprouted and grew in the cracks almost instantaneously. The magically sprouted trunk cared not for the space it invaded and easily broke the latches off the doors causing them to swing open. Holly only had seconds to act. She threw herself from the truck which was still barreling down the dirt road at top speed.

The landing was rough, but it sure beat the entrapment afforded to her by the transport.

She had no time to celebrate her freedom as the truck skidded to a halt. She did not want to stick around to face her captor’s wrath a second time. Her arms remained bound, so she used her legs to push herself into a nearby bush.

With her last two berries, she cast Tempesta di Polline; another nature element spell. This one was a support spell she cast in the middle rank – Moderato.

The effect was apparent immediately. Pollen filled the air and hung around, spread further by the slight breeze that graced the forest.

It would do nothing to the fire Resonator who resisted it. But his Maestro wouldn’t fare so fortunate.

With a silent hope that would be enough, Holly pushed herself deeper into the forest – away from the road. She had to get as far away from her kidnappers as possible.

Their enraged screams only inspired tears of terror to pour down the girl’s cheeks as she made her retreat in a fearful frenzy. She tried to quiet herself as she continued to flee. The trees, rocks, and shrubbery all got in her way as she was forced to push the upper half of her body along. She wasn’t fast by any stretch of the imagination and standing was basically impossible without the usage of her arms.

Finally, she decided enough was enough. She had to get to her feet. Even if her arms were still bound tightly, she’d have a much easier time escaping if she was standing.

As it turned out, having your hands behind your back made it quite difficult to stand up. Holly rolled face-down and using her head as leverage, she eventually managed to get herself onto her knees. With the hard part out of the way, she managed to finally get herself upright.

Just in time too, as the colorful obscenities of her captors were growing closer. She looked around and discovered she was in the company of many seed-bearing plants – her allies in this war. It was as if she had an entire army’s worth of ammunition at her disposal. Even without her hands, she still had a mouth – she hoped that would be enough for her to cast spells with.

She couldn’t get choosy with her selections. She found a tree and bit into it. The connoisseur in her wanted to violently reject the bark, but she wasn’t a foodie right now – she was an escapee trying to survive.

The tree had an insane amount of rhythm to offer her. It made sense logically, it was such a big living being, unlike the seeds she normally drained for spellcraft. Even so, she only had a limited number of shots. From her guess she was still pulling from seeds, just going through the tree’s rhythm network to access them.

Nature element rhythm filled her body with enough to cast any of her spells at their maximum power. More distractionary maneuvers. She just needed to run.

The tree relinquished five seeds, providing her with the maximum level of support magic. The pollen of Tempesta di Polline filled the air again but with far more violence this time. Visibility dropped as the fine grains invaded the breathable space.

Again, she knew the fire element wouldn’t be hindered by such magic. She hoped the dip in visibility would help her vanish into the trees.

“AAAUGH FUCK!”

And the screams of the vulnerable Maestro could disguise the sound of her footsteps. Holly bolted, running through the underbrush. She had no destination, no guiding marker. The only direction was “away”. Away from her assailants, away from danger. She didn’t need civilization to survive. Even as naïve as she was, she could live off of sunlight and water.

Her people were survivalists. The only time she ever thanked her foremothers for taking in the blessings of nature.

Holly pushed through some shrubbery and found the worst possible thing barring her way: raging rapids. Her head whipped to and fro as she desperately tried to find an alternate path that wasn’t the violent water.

“It’s this way!”

The zalavan trembled, the rope binding her feeling all the tighter as her breathing intensified. She had no choice. At least in the water she could hide from his fire magic.

Hopefully, this wasn’t the conclusion of her escape – the bookend of her life’s story.

Right as the fire Resonator burst through the bushes, Holly jumped. A massive stream of fire narrowly missed her, the sheer heat from the enraged attack not hurting her physically but psychologically.

If he hadn’t missed…

SPLASH!