Secret Shade (Sapphire Shade Book Two) by Ann Serafini

Author:Ann Serafini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: chase, asiah, ikhalea

Chapter Nine

Day 10,767

Ocea

After nearly 30 years on Ocea, Asiah had hit a plateau in her training. She could control her powers with expert precision and unconscious competence, but she was still 50 years away from reaching her maturity. She was running out of things to learn, if that was even possible. Worst of all, she was going stir-crazy in the castle. She’d read every book in the library she could understand and even attempted to translate some of the others.

One of the texts in the library was an atlas of Ocea. Asiah found it several years earlier and decided it was terribly vague. She’d spent a lot of time updating it when she wasn’t training. The cave systems around the castle were thoroughly mapped now, as well as all the land on the small planet excluding one area: the mountains.

Several pages had been left blank in the atlas so they might one day be mapped, and Asiah tried not to think that the reason they hadn’t been charted yet might have something to do with how treacherous the terrain was. She shuddered to think that others had ventured out to map them and never returned to finish the atlas.

To combat the boredom, Asiah decided to navigate the mountains once and for all. After 30 years of only each other’s company, Meri and Asiah could read each other like a book. Instead of lying to her sister and promising to be back as soon as possible, Asiah was straight with Meri that morning at breakfast. Meri took it well, trusting Asiah to take care of herself. She hugged Meri and promised to return.

Now she stood on the flat plain at the edge of the mountains armed only with Chase’s dagger and a pack containing food and supplies. She opted to get some hiking boots on Earth for this expedition, even though she hadn’t worn shoes of any kind in years. As a result, her feet felt heavy and awkward as she hiked.

The mountains were deep inside an electromagnetic anomaly, which meant Asiah couldn’t channel into them. She discovered this by accident when trying to channel around the planet. She hit the anomaly and fell out of the sky, just barely catching herself before she slammed into the ground. Now when she circumnavigated the small planet about the size of Earth’s moon she avoided the mountains altogether.

The going was rough, and for three days Asiah saw nothing but barren rock and jagged peaks. Little vegetation grew in the mountains and the meager atmosphere of Ocea was even thinner at higher elevations. Occasionally Asiah saw small goat-like creatures hopping from rock to rock making tiny bleating noises. They were the size of house cats with miniature hooves and shaggy gray hair that helped them blend into the landscape, although Asiah didn’t see any natural predators from which to hide. She made a rudimentary sketch of the goats to add to her journals when she returned.

On the fourth day she found the temple. She almost missed it, it was so hidden in the mountainside.

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