Day 3Well, barely 2 minutes of the day left, but here it is, just in time!!


 

Wyn gazed at the massive tree. This had to be the right place. It matched every description of the mystical site she’d read in her search for it.

But something seemed … wrong.

All the ancient texts had pictured the place as vibrant, magical and full of life. This tree was bare of leaves, the grass around was dead and brown and even the air seemed stale and still.

She moved closer to the tree, trying to see if there might be some distinguishing mark that would tell her for certain if she’d found the right tree.

She stepped over the tangled roots that had pushed out of the earth and circled the trunk. It was big enough that six people holding hands would still struggle to circle it completely. She gingerly touched the bark of the tree, surprised at how smooth it felt. It was unusual to see a tree with white, smooth bark in this area of the kingdom.

Wyn yelped softly as she pulled her hand away. A sliver of wood had lodged in her small finger. Red blood formed a small dot where the splinter had entered and a tiny smear of it had marred the whiteness of the tree.

Sticking the injured finger in her mouth, she gently sucked it, eyeing the tree. Something had changed.

She circled the tree again, not quite sure what was different. When she reached the place where she’d gotten her splinter, she stopped and stared.

A delicate flower had bloomed on the branch nearest the blood smear. Or nearest where the blood smear had been. The blood was mysteriously gone, but the flower was gradually opening its petals. The centre of it was splashed with a ragged blood-red pattern, splaying outwards and ending in pure white petals.

Shocked, Wyn stumbled backwards, barely staying upright as she tripped over one of the roots.

This was definitely the right place.

And something was definitely very wrong.

Blood was impure magic. Tainted by mortality, it never ended well when people tried to use it for magical purposes.

Why did this tree use blood magic? It was supposed to be a symbol of purity, of the highest form of magic and the source of the ancient magic she had been searching so long for.

The tree had welcomed her blood – it had used the small drop to create a single blossom, an act of life. Every cell in Wyn’s body screamed that this was wrong, that the tree had somehow been tainted.

Well, that was what she had been tasked to find out. When the pure magic had started fading from the world, the great scholars and mages had suspected the source had been corrupted.

This was the source. Something had corrupted it, and she needed to find out what before things got really bad.

Who knew what would happen to the world as they knew it if the source of all magic became tainted by the blood of mortality…


It’s a very rough one, I know! It doesn’t flow very well, but I am quite tired! As I’ve said before, it’s just a very basic draft of a possible start to a story. Everything can be improved in the future! 🙂

Is this one of your favourite 500-word-story-starters? Click the heart to like it and it may become a fully-fledged story! –>  1

<– Day 2     #    Day 4 –>