A strange, thick blue liquid roiled inside the cast-iron cauldron, popping with thick bubbles that smelled sharply of ozone.
Lyra leaned over the small wooden table in the guest room, consulting her leather-bound notebook. Now, two eyes of a Webmaw, she thought, carefully plucking two tiny, pitch-black spheres from a glass vial. She dropped them into the boiling brew.
BANG.
A violent explosion of blue soot erupted from the cauldron. The concussive force knocked Lyra completely off her feet.
She hit the floorboards with a heavy thud, coughing out a lungful of acrid smoke. What am I missing? she screamed internally, glaring up at the ceiling. The ratios are flawless! Why won't it stabilize into a paralytic?
Frustrated, she slammed her gloved fist hard against the wooden floor.
A deafening BANG echoed through the house.
Lyra flinched, staring at her knuckles in shock. She struck the floorboards a second time, testing the wood. Only a dull, quiet thump followed.
The heavy guest room door violently swung open, slamming against the wall.
Ravon stood in the doorway. He was drenched in cold sweat, his chest heaving as he frantically sucked in air. His red eyes were wide, blown out with absolute terror. He didn't say a word. He just scrambled into the room, collapsing into the narrow space between the bed and the wall, pulling his knees tightly to his chest to hide.
"Are you trying to break the door?" Lyra snapped, dusting the soot off her dress.
She turned to berate him, but the words died in her throat. Ravon was trembling uncontrollably.
He is in pure shock, Lyra realized, her annoyance instantly evaporating into cold, calculated focus.
She knelt on the mattress, hovering over where he hid on the floor. She raised her staff. The yellow orb ignited, flooding the dark corners of the room with a deep, pulsing, warm golden light. The soothing magical aura washed over Ravon. The violent shaking in his shoulders slowly began to ease.
When the light faded, Lyra kept her voice dead flat and perfectly calm. "What happened?"
Ravon slowly raised his head. His eyes were entirely unfocused. "Someone... someone is following us."
"Who is following us?"
"I don't... I don't know." He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. "But someone tried to kill me at the village square. He had a knife. His neck..." Ravon squeezed his eyes shut, a fresh tremor wracking his body. "He was smiling."
Lyra stared at the broken boy. Who would track us all the way out into the northern desert? What do they want?
She reached into her dimensional pouch, pulling out a small vial filled with pale blue liquid. Interrogating him now is useless. His heart rate is too high. He needs some rest. "Drink it," she ordered, pressing the glass against his cracked lips.
Ravon didn't argue. He swallowed the bitter potion. Within seconds, the lingering tremors vanished entirely, replaced by a heavy, unnatural lethargy. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped sideways into a deep sleep.
Grumbling under her breath, Lyra grabbed his collar and hauled his heavy, limp body onto the rough mattress. She grabbed her pointed hat and her staff, her blue eyes turning icy.
Let's find out exactly what happened.
The desert sun was brutally bright as Lyra stepped into the village square. A few locals wandered the perimeter, paying her no mind. She walked directly to the center, stopping near the wooden notice board.
"Reveal," she whispered.
Her sharp blue eyes bled into a glowing, radiant yellow. The world around her instantly lost its color. The sky, the sand, the wooden board, and the distant villagers all washed into the exact same blinding shade of monochrome yellow.
Tsk. I really need to master this spell, she complained internally, squinting against the glare. Scanning an environment when every single outline blends together makes tracking a nightmare.
Sweeping her gaze across the ground, a dark, pulsing anomaly caught her eye. Beneath the wooden board sat a heavy leather bag. Ravon's dropped supplies.
Lyra knelt, picking up the bag of meat and fruit. As she pulled it away, the glowing yellow spell illuminated the disturbed sand underneath.
Her breath completely stopped.
Written into the dirt in dark blood were two words.
Serce Verta
Lyra's glowing eyes snapped back to their natural blue. The world flooded with color, but she didn't notice. A single drop of icy sweat slid down her cheek.
"How..." she breathed, the word barely escaping her lips.
She stood up, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She cast a paranoid, sweeping glance across the empty rooftops and the quiet streets. How does the stalker know my real name? No one knows that name. Only Mother and the Guildmaster. A deep, unsettling dread settled into her stomach. We need to leave this place. Immediately.
Back in the guest room, Lyra paced the floorboards beside the sleeping swordsman. How do we leave a village surrounded by miles of open desert without an intelligent stalker tracking our footprints?
She stopped pacing. She pulled a clean sheet of parchment from her desk, uncorking her ink.
I need help, she wrote quickly. Someone is following us. I need to leave this place without getting spotted.
She rolled the parchment tight. Reaching beneath the collar of her dress, she pulled out a small, finger-length silver whistle hanging from a chain. The metal was carved into the shape of a screaming human skull, with two flawless red rubies set deep into the eye sockets. It was Miranda's whistle.
Only Mother can fix a mess like this.
Lyra brought the skull to her lips and blew.
No sound came out. Instead, the ambient light in the room instantly dulled, as if a heavy gray filter had been dropped over the sun. The air grew freezing cold.
In the center of the room, the wooden floorboards rippled like liquid water.
A long, slender hand encased in pitch-black knight's armor breached the surface of the wood. It didn't splinter the planks; it simply phased through reality. Slowly, the horrific entity pulled itself up from the floor.
The Black Knight stood over seven feet tall. Three jagged, curved spikes protruded from its armored shoulders. A heavy spear rested in one hand, and the hilt of a longsword peeked over its back. The crushing aura rolling off the armor made the air incredibly difficult to breathe.
The faceless visor turned downward. The Knight held out an open, armored palm.
Lyra didn't flinch. She slapped the rolled parchment into the metal hand. "It is an urgent letter."
The Knight curled its fingers around the paper. Without a sound, the entity sank straight back down into the wooden floor, leaving absolutely no trace of its presence. The room's lighting instantly snapped back to normal.
I hope she responds quickly, Lyra thought, rubbing her cold arms.
She turned her attention to the scattered mess of her alchemy supplies, methodically packing everything away into her dimensional pouch. She picked up Ravon's sword, leaning it gently against the nightstand beside his sleeping head.
This muscle-head is still going to need this, she noted. She stared at his calm, sleeping face. He claims he has all seven elemental energies. If that is true, why does he rely on basic spells and a rusty piece of iron? Why hold back? She sighed, turning away. I suppose I can't interrogate a sleeping patient.
Night had fully fallen over the desert by the time the room dulled again.
Lyra sat on the edge of the mattress, biting into a paar—a rough, green-skinned fruit that tasted sharply sweet and bitter all at once.
The floorboards rippled. The Black Knight rose from the wood, holding a folded letter and a swirling, smoky glass orb.
"Do you not see that I am eating?" Lyra grumbled, chewing her fruit.
The Knight didn't care. It casually tossed the letter and the orb onto the mattress, sinking immediately back into the floor.
Lyra finished her paar, wiped her hands, and broke the heavy wax seal on the letter.
Oh, sweetheart! the elegant, flowing script read. It looks like you are being tracked by a highly intelligent entity. I attempted a divination to pinpoint your stalker's location, but surprisingly, the scrying pool showed nothing. It seems your follower is a master of concealment magic.
I am sending you an Orb of Invisibility. Slowly pour your mana into the glass. It will completely erase you, your companion, and your presence from the physical plane. A word of warning: do not pour too much mana into the core. If the glass breaks, you will be violently erased from reality for several hours.
Lyra picked up the smoky orb, turning it over in her hands. Perfect. Tomorrow morning, we disappear.
She glanced back down at the letter. The elegant ink on the parchment was shifting, rearranging itself into a brand new sentence.
Looks like you found your first friend.
"Witch!" Lyra hissed, her face burning. She snapped her fingers, igniting the parchment in a flash of fire and letting the ash fall to the floor.
She glared at the bed. Ravon was sprawled comfortably across the entire mattress, completely dead to the world.
I really wanted to sleep on a real mattress tonight, she thought miserably. Unrolling her thick wool blanket onto the hard wooden floor, the little witch curled up and forced herself to sleep.
Midnight brought a freezing chill to the room.
Ravon's eyes cracked open. His throat was entirely parched, feeling like it was packed with desert sand.
He sat up slowly, his head throbbing from the sedative. The memory of the village square—the broken neck, the bleeding smile, the black spiral mark—flashed behind his eyes. He gripped the edge of the bed, forcing his breathing to slow down.
I need water.
He slipped out of the room, padding quietly down the dark, creaking corridor. Faint moonlight guided him to the small kitchen. He found a clay pot resting on the counter, grabbed a wooden cup, and drank deeply. The cool water soothed his burning throat.
He splashed a handful of water over his face, washing away the cold sweat of his nightmares.
Leaning against the wooden window frame, he looked out at the sprawling, dark desert. He tilted his head up, his red eyes scanning the unfamiliar northern sky until he found the faint, steady light of his specific star.
I hope everyone is doing great, he thought, the familiar ache of homesickness warring with the lingering terror in his chest.
When Ravon returned to the guest room, the floor was empty. Lyra was sitting on the very edge of the mattress, tossing the smoky glass orb lightly into the air and catching it.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, not looking away from the glass.
"I'm fine right now," Ravon answered, keeping his voice low.
"Great. We are leaving this village first thing in the morning. I have already packed your supplies into my pouch. Your sword is by the nightstand."
Ravon looked at the familiar hilt. "But if we leave, we will just be followed again."
"Not this time," Lyra said, holding up the smoky orb. "With this, we are going to leave Duneveil without a single soul noticing we are gone."
Ravon stared at the swirling smoke trapped inside the glass. "Okay. As long as no one can track us." He let out a long, heavy yawn, the remnants of the potion pulling at his eyes.
"Go to sleep," Lyra commanded. "You still look completely exhausted, and I am not doing your share of the manual labor on the mountain."
Ravon nodded, stepping toward the bed.
Lyra held up a hand, blocking his path. "Not on the bed. The mattress is mine now. You are sleeping on the floor."
Ravon looked at the thin wool blanket resting on the hard wood. "Yeah. Yeah, alright."
Too tired to argue with a witch, he collapsed onto the floor, pulling the blanket over his shoulders and letting the dark claim him once more.