The Longest Day

Tahni groaned and rolled onto her side, shielding her eyes from the warm morning sunlight and willing herself to believe that the day before had been nothing but a figment of her imagination.

That was a lie, though, and she knew it.

Deep down, she’d known the whole time that it had to be real. There was no way she could create something so detailed, so completely incomprehensible, with her own imagination. Tahni was a bright girl, but she had never been particularly creative.

This kind of absurdity was far out of her league.

Pulling herself up and out of bed, she finally gave in with a sigh and accepted that she needed to go back; needed to find out what this was all about.

Hurriedly, she dressed. Clumsily pulling her pants over each leg—almost falling over in the process—and buttoning her blouse, she rushed to do her chores for the day so she could go back to find Vita and get answers.

~

By early afternoon, she had finished all of her work around the house and was slipping on her hiking boots. Taking an apple from the plain bowl on their sturdy wooden dining table, she called out to her father to tell him where she was going, then dashed out the door.

It didn’t take her long to reach the clearing again. Today, she simply ran.

Bursting into the clearing, Tahni headed straight for the shallow stream, where Vita sat waiting in the sunlight.

The woman looked up from the glistening water, and Tahni noticed that she seemed surprised by the sight of the young girl striding toward her.

“I wasn’t sure you would return,” Vita called out.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d come back either,” Tahni replied once in earshot.

She sat down opposite the woman, stealing a quick glance at the water slowly trickling downstream for a moment as she recalled the image she had seen painted there on its surface, not 24 hours earlier.

“So what was this prophecy you received?” she asked pointedly. “What exactly is it that you claim I’m supposedly destined for?”

Tahni didn’t want to waste time with small talk. If this was as serious as Vita had made it seem yesterday, she needed to know exactly what to expect.

Vita considered for a moment before speaking, her fingertips unconsciously moving to touch the small scar by her eye. “I think it would be easier to show you a part of the vision that came to me before I fully explain,” she finally stated, seeming to understand Tahni’s desire for answers.

She extended her slender arm, palm facing skyward.

“Take my hand.”

Hesitating for just a moment, Tahni obeyed. Yesterday this woman had somehow made an image appear in a stream. What part of her gifts Vita would show Tahni today, she hadn’t the slightest idea.
What happened next, though, made floating pictures seem like child’s play.

It was something Tahni would never forget, and certainly something she would never be able to truly
explain.

When their hands connected, a sudden vision flashed through her mind; quicker than lightning, brighter than the sun, and stranger than anything she’d ever experienced.

At first it seemed to be random images. Impossibly fast flashes of people and places and starry night skies.

Then, without warning, a man appeared. He stood at the edge of a cliff, moonlight gleaming in his cold blue eyes and silhouetting a jawline strong enough to cut through stone. With short-cropped blonde hair and a clean-shaven face, he was almost a handsome man. The kind women would swoon over, if not for the thick, jagged scar that ran down the left side of his face, reaching from temple to chin.

He wore a cruel, hardened expression as he turned to speak to a second man—dark haired and olive skinned—standing in stark contrast at his side.

“When will you be ready?” he muttered threateningly to his companion. “Prodigious sorcerer or not, I’m beginning to grow impatient with you.”

“Soon, my Lord. It will take time, though. There are things that need to be done just right. Certain stars must be aligned, if you will.”

The reply did not come from a cowering man, as Tahni may have expected. She was certainly not ashamed to admit that she, herself, would be cowering in the presence of a man like that.

But no. Instead, confidence resonated dangerously in the voice of the dark-haired man, and he smirked to himself at the mention of stars, as if it were amusing.

The scarred man, however, did not appear to be in the mood for jokes. “How much time do you need? I want this world and the people left in it turned to dust. I want them served justice for their skewed beliefs and their twisted reality. I want my new world, and my new world order. And you, Barren,” he hissed, jabbing a thick finger sharply into his sorcerer’s chest, “you do not want to keep me waiting.”

The man never faltered, despite the hostility hanging thick in the air between them.

“I understand your desire to move forward with this quickly, but until I have what I need, I’m afraid the spell is useless. Patience would serve you well, my Lord,” he replied.

“Having patience will do nothing to stop those who might oppose me. Get whatever it is that you require and perform the spell as soon as your precious stars have aligned,” he spat. “I want to be rid of this place.”

“Yes, my Lord,” the sorcerer murmured without further argument, watching as the scarred man turned and left without so much as another glance in his direction.

With another flash of bright light, Tahni found herself back in the clearing and staring at Vita, stunned.

“I don’t understand. What was all of that about? Who were they?” she breathed.

“The short explanation is that there is a man, power hungry and bitter, who desires a world which he can control, and the destruction of the world which he cannot.”

“And the long explanation?” Tahni prompted.

Vita hesitated. “The man—he goes by Mortis Slay—has followers who are loyal to him, and one of the most powerful sorcerers I’ve ever known at his own personal disposal.”

“That was the other man in the vision,” Tahni guessed. “That Barren man.”

“Yes. Barren Aldock,” Vita confirmed. “Slay plans to have Aldock create a completely new reality, of sorts, for himself and his people. But while he is a very gifted sorcerer, Aldock doesn’t have enough strength to create an entirely new world, nor does he have the ability to completely destroy the world we know now. What he can do, however—and what you have been chosen to prevent him from doing—is create a single liveable planet for Slay and his followers and, for lack of a better word, push the planet we live on now out of the sun’s orbit. Essentially, we will float alone in space.”

Knowing full well that she must sound just as crazy as Vita did, Tahni went along with it. “Okay, but how does that help them? All they would have done is move a planet. I don’t see how that destroys this world or helps this Slay man in creating his new one,” she countered.

“What you don’t realise, Tahni, is that when the sorcerer moves our planet from where it drifts now, he will create this new planet—this completely new world in which Slay can rule, unopposed—in its place. They will exchange our old world for their new one within the solar system. We will be pushed out of the delicate balance in which we hang, and that is how we will meet our end. Moving us further from the sun will freeze our world over. Moving us closer will burn our world up. We will perish either way, and they will live on in our stead.”

“How in all Heavens am I supposed to stop this?!” Tahni exclaimed almost hysterically. “I’m seventeen years old, Vita! The hardest thing I’ve ever done was deal with the grief of my mother’s death, and I was just a child then. I can’t do this. There’s no way!”

“You can, Tahni. You were chosen for a reason. If you couldn’t do this, the prophecy would not have led me to you.”

“How?” she argued. “How can I possibly stop a man with not only someone who you yourself said was one of the ‘most powerful sorcerers you’ve ever known’ on his side, but also Heavens know how many other followers as well? Enough for him to make an entirely new world for, apparently!”

Tahni couldn’t breathe. Her heart beat painfully in her chest and her hands were slick with sweat. She was terrified. She had seen Slay in Vita’s vision. She had seen his cold eyes, and his cruel smile. And if that wasn’t enough, she had seen the sickening, deep-seated hunger for violence within him. Violence towards even those he would consider his allies.

She simply couldn’t defeat a man like that. Even if he were alone, without followers, or sorcerers, or anyone to aid him, Tahni still couldn’t see how she was expected to put a stop to his plans. She had never lifted a hand to someone in her life. She had no idea how to fight, and even if she did, she would never be strong enough to overpower a man like Slay, broad-shouldered and thick-armed as he was.

“Tahni, calm down,” she heard someone murmur.

Lightheaded and foggy, she realised after a moment that it was Vita. It had been Vita’s voice she’d heard.

“Put your head between your knees and breathe. You’re pale as the spirits,” the woman ordered gently, placing a hand to Tahni’s cold face.

Blinking slowly as she made a feeble attempt to focus on Vita’s face before her, Tahni did as she was told.

They sat in silence for the next short while as Tahni calmed the rapid pounding of her heart and regained some clarity.

“I can’t do this, Vita,” she whispered once she felt relatively normal.

“You have time to come to terms with your fate, Tahni; to figure out a way to stop this. Aldock must perform the spell on the longest day of the year—the summer solstice. That is still a month from now.”

After a short pause, she continued, although this time Tahni swore she detected an uneasy tone to the woman’s voice. “The cliff they stood on in that vision, though, is in the Rohnalian Mountains. It will take us over a month just to get there, and that is on horseback. We can’t stay here for long.”

Suddenly, Tahni knew why Vita seemed tense, and while they had only met yesterday, it did not surprise her.

Vita seemed, to Tahni, to be Slay’s polar opposite. Where his eyes were harsh and unfeeling, hers were gentle and kind. Where his grin was malicious and bitter, hers was warm and welcoming. Where he demanded his wants and grew spiteful of anyone who kept them from him, she explained her needs with quiet hope and an understanding ear.

Vita was afraid. Tahni could see that she felt a certain sense of responsibility in stopping Slay from laying waste to their world. She was afraid, and she was desperate. But despite that, she felt awful for asking Tahni to leave her family—her whole life—in order to join her on such a dangerous journey.

Vita was asking this of her not because she wanted it, but because it was necessary. She truly didn’t have a choice.

This, Tahni realised, was her destiny, whether she was ready to accept it or not.

The crystal blue of Vita’s eyes seemed to pierce straight through her as she sighed, tucked her hair behind her ear, and squared her shoulders.

“Okay,” she said with a small nod. “Okay, give me some time to get a rucksack ready and leave a note for my family. I’ll come back tomorrow so we can figure out how to get to the Rohnalian Mountains. We’ll need to stop at towns and villages as often as we can along the way for new supplies. Then we’ll leave the day after.”

Vita looked stunned for a moment, as if despite her best efforts, she never dreamed that Tahni would actually agree to something so dangerous—and with good reason, she believed.

“Tahni, I…” she trailed off.

“You don’t need to say anything. Like you told me, it’s what I was chosen for. I can’t escape this, no matter how much I might want to.”

“Thank you,” Vita breathed. She looked as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and it was then that Tahni realised just how important this was to her.

She simply bowed her head in response.

“I should go and gather the things I’ll need, but I’ll come back as soon as I can tomorrow,” she promised.

The two shared a small smile before Tahni rose from her place on the grass and made to leave the clearing.

She was several paces away by the time she turned to look back at the fair-haired woman she hoped she could soon call friend. “I still have more questions, by the way!” Tahni called across the empty space between them.

At that, Vita let out an almost musical laugh, and it was the first time Tahni had seen her eyes truly light up.

She really was a breathtakingly beautiful woman, though Tahni suspected she did not think of herself that way.

~

By the time Tahni arrived home, she had sobered.

Throwing her apple core to the ground—having finally eaten it during her walk back through the woods—she entered the house quietly and headed straight for her father’s bedroom, where she found him at the wooden desk he had crafted himself, buried in his paperwork.

“Dad,” she said, catching his attention.

Hank jumped in his seat at the sound of her voice. He hadn’t heard her enter the room.

“Oh, you frightened me,” he chuckled. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“Uh, nothing. I just… Wanted to talk to you.”

She couldn’t bring herself to smile, knowing that she would soon be leaving the two most important people in her life without an explanation.

Oblivious to the fact, Hank smiled at his daughter. He stood up, stretched, and moved to sit on the end of his bed, gesturing for her to join him there.

They sat and talked for the rest of their evening, the conversation gradually drifting towards the memories they each had of Tahni’s mother before she had died without either of them intentionally pushing it in that direction.

It had happened when Tahni and Kobi were young. Tahni had still been small enough that she needed to stand on a crate in order to help her parents wash the dishes each night.

She hadn’t been lucky enough to spend much time with her mother—certainly much less than the other children she had grown up with—and at first it had made her angry. After all, how was it fair that her friends still saw their mother’s every day, yet hers was taken from her so soon? As she grew older, though, Tahni learned to let it go. What was done was done, and she couldn’t change it. So she simply held dear the time that they had spent together, though she still missed her profoundly each and every day.

It was times like this, however—times when her father would tell her stories of his wife from before their children were born—that Tahni cherished. This was one of the ways she kept her mother’s memory alive within her.

She knew her father felt the same.

What Hank didn’t realise, though, was that this time, it was also Tahni’s way of saying goodbye. If she left and didn’t return, she wanted her last two nights with her family to be special.