Whisper Ridge Reunion

[Rook]

“SHENANIGANS!”

He hated that I could sneak up on him, so naturally I took every opportunity. He jumped – something that doesn’t happen as often as I’d like – and hit his elbow firmly on the table. He cursed through his teeth and gave me that look. A look filled with so much warning it would intimidate most. He pointed a finger at me, surely about to unleash a string of colorful words in my general direction, but I just smiled and shook his finger in greeting.

“Sometimes, you vex me.” The frustration melted from his face, replaced by relief and pain. Concern must have read clearly on mine, but he waved it off and took a long dreg from his tankard. “Glad you made it in one piece, it is better than most of us ended up. Hopefully, we can find Tannas and the others back in Meadowmere and I can get Jack and Z to make me a ne-” he paused, “What’s wrong?”

He hadn’t heard yet. Riana mentioned that he took a beating at Hexhaven, and that the healing he’d received saved his life – but it cost of a few days’ worth of fitful sleep. I handed him the letter left by a raven upon my arrival at Whisper Ridge. Meadowmere had been taken. Marcus and Kelora held captive. The Rousseau Champion on the hunt for tortured prisoners. Prisoners we didn’t have. We are to regroup in Haven.

“Ah… I see…” he whispered. “Well that changes… nothing. We have to continue as planned, just need to head to Haven and speak with Kalen.”

“Kalen!” I jumped up, unsure how I forgot about the items hidden in the gear I left by the door. “Shinies!”

“Oh? Did you find it?”

I slid him the letter that I had penned on the way here for him to read while I untangled the wrapping I secured them in.

Firstly, there’s something still at Hexhaven. It spoke to me while I was smuggling food from the kitchen to the children. It’s dark. It’s angry.

He raised an eyebrow at me, but I urged him to keep reading.

I don’t know where in Hexhaven it is, I could never find it. But I could hear it screaming. I could feel its fury. There was a woman called Jone there, searching for something. She saw me, but she didn’t tell them I was there. She put a finger to her lips. She wouldn’t tell them I was there, so long as I kept to myself.

And the De Jardin commander was there. I heard him tell the men they were setting up the school as a Command center, but I know he knows something is there. I feel they both may be searching for whatever fragment of an artifact is sleeping deep in the school.

Grimm, I’m scared. The magic isn’t … natural. Someone’s twisted it with shadows.

They cannot find it first. We MUST tell Kalen.

These other artifacts I will happily hand over to you. IF you come back with me after this is over, assuming they don’t find what I fear they’re looking for.

He looked at me again, carefully reading my face for a moment. I could feel his thoughts churning. He read the note again.

“Tell you what,” he said, “let’s go to Haven. Let’s go get Meadowmere back. After Meadowmere is secure, we will go back to Hexhaven.”

Of course, I agreed. We certainly couldn’t leave our friends in such dire circumstances. But I also feared the magic, fractured, lying deep within the walls of Hexhaven. I took the letter back from Grimm, flipped it to the backside, and grabbed a pen.

We should have burned the school to the ground.

“That’s still on the table,” he said, “however. You brought me shinies.”

I slid the pack across the table and carefully unwrapped the items with care.

A skull, crafted from a heavy metal. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the magic. Not anything new for me in this new realm, but it felt familiar, so I grabbed it. Grimm seemed impressed by the weight of it and the skill required to shape such a perfect skull.

A ring to match the skull. A husk with no magic, but I thought it a suitable vessel to house the magic of the carved skull.

The tome with black pages, with gold and silver sigils and runes throughout the pages. The inside cover held the symbol of the Ferryman. The tome I had been sent to find. It seemed rather nondescript, buried among much bigger, more elaborate tomes on the last shelf of the library. The magic in this book was very clear in its warning. “NOT FOR YOU,” it said. It didn’t complain, though, when I picked it up and hid it away in my pack. It felt grateful, as a matter of fact. Grimm’s face lit up when I handed it over to him.

A sword, perhaps once wielded by the same individual that held – or wrote – the tome. It was sheathed in the same aura. Magic that felt like tendrils of smoke rising from embers. The magic sleeping within the blade purred with what I could really only describe as sarcasm, with a strand of wit.

“Finally,” he sighed, “Good news. Was there anything else of note you found?”

A handful of shinies no one would miss. A box with rings – more vessels to house magic, but non-magical in and of themselves. Faceted pieces of glass someone fashioned into the shape of diamonds in every color imaginable.

“OH!” I scribbled on the back of the letter again, “This! Careful, it’s HEAVY! It fell out of the tome for Kalen. I almost left it behind, but it whispered your name.”

I reached once more into my pack and put the hefty coin in his hand…

[Author]

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