“Just your retainers, padding around your revered hole in the wall. Tell me, I’ve never figured it out- do they gather around you for the warmth, your magic, or something else entirely?” said Efrain.

Innialysia gave a snort as the air slowly cooled around them.

“They are hardly my ‘retainers’. I have no need of a court. If they choose to ‘pad reverently’ in my presence, then I suppose they can simply recognize majesty when they see it.”

“Or smell it, as the case may be.” Remarked Efrain.

“I’d rather not have any such remarks upon my person. Particularly not from a being whose side-occupation can be described as a ‘scent-obsessive.”

She had him there.

“Alright, you win. Are you ready to leave?” he said.

“I will be in a moment,” she said as she began to bath herself.

“You can’t do this on the way?”

“I could. But I’d rather sleep in such cold.”

“You’re a wisp mother, fire rendered in maternal memory. You don’t feel cold,” he pointed out.

“True,” she said, moving on to a paw but keeping her amber eyes locked on him, “but you largely don’t feel pain. Despite that, you’d still be quite irritated if I singed your ribs, wouldn’t you?”

Efrain raised his hands in mock disgust as he turned around.

“Come and find me when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting in the courtyard.”

She went back to grooming as he departed down the narrow hall, nearly tripping on a selection of cats that had waited patiently at the outskirts. As he rounded the corner, he looked back to see them gather around Innie like she was some idol that they must prostrate before.

Tykhon was waiting patiently as he carried an armful of various useful things - fire starters, several pens and inkwells, rolls of parchments, a couple reference books and maps, a compass, and so on. As he packed the collection away in the saddlebags, he saw Innie padding out into the light snow.

Not for the first time, Efrain wondered how much of that air was the wisp mother and how much of it was the cat. It gave one of the limbs of the creature a look and a sniff, then hopped onto its back.

“Settled? It’s almost midnight.” asked Efrain.

“Quite,” the cat responded, “minus the blistering cold. I do hope you’ve packed a blanket or two.”

The pointed look she gave him suggested that she was simply being pedantic, but giving Tykhon a bad first impression was not a risk Efrain wanted to take.

“Here,” he said, retrieving a thick woollen blanket from within one of the saddle-packs.

“You remembered! Oh, and my silk cushions?” She said, making her delight evident.

Efrain was half way up into the saddle, but he stopped to give her a look. The cat stared back at him, amber eyes glowing faintly in the waxing light of the courtyard. A moment of silence passed between them, an almost imperceptible tug-of-war being fought between two ancient minds.

“Alright,” Innie said, “I’m joking.”

He mounted on Tykhon, who huffed and pawed at the snow.

“So, where to?” he said as he took the reins.

“You can follow the west valley wall south until you hit the meadows, then there should be a bridge somewhere after the mid-way falls. Kalnive’s den is not much father than that.”

“Right, then,” Efrain said, as he compelled Tykhon to troot of the gate.

Carnes’s talent showed itself once more as they careened down mountain passes and over ridges, the mount as comfortable with the rocky slopes as with the deep snows. Several time Tykhon went with such speed that he was certain that he’d slide off the saddle. Efrain of course felt little pain, but being shattered to pieces on some lonely rocks was not a palatable option.

The mount had reached the forest by the time the moon had peaked, and set off into the trees. More than once a errant branch had knocked Efrain back into the saddle, earning him a peal of laughter from Innialysia. It was less funny when a particularly low one pushed him back onto her. The resulting screech was a salve to the metaphysical scratches that each laugh had dealt to him.

After a while the creature stopped by a stream, letting them dismount as it leaned down and gulped the water. After a short while the creature shook its mane and raised its head looked at them expectantly.

“I wonder what Carnes had to do to give it that much stamina,” Efrain said as it nuzzled his hand.

“Knowing that one, best not to ask. Chances are that ‘what they had to do’ is still twitching at the bottom of some pit.” Innie said as she leap back onto the mounts back, chewing on a piece of salted beef.

Trees blurred past as the creature clambered its way through the roots and rocks. By the time the sun had come up, they were already well past half-way to the village, by Efrain’s reckoning. The sun wheeled and bent, the forest turning from a twisting dark mass of bark and roots to a pleasant, if cold, sunlight dabbled path. Efrain tried to make a game of it, seeing if he could spot animals. Generally, he failed miserably, although he was rather impressed when he managed to identify a squirrel as it shot past them.

The combination of the lack of conversation to his rear, and the complete in-feasibility of attempting to read at this ludicrous speed meant that Efrain quickly became bored. Efrain Belacore was no stranger to boredom of course, he was in fact a master of it. He languished in it like some tedious whale that had beached upon the shores of the monotonous isles from the wishy-washy sea.

Just when he had begun to entertain the notion of attempting to blow something up as they passed it, the trees began to change. Deciduous fell away to ever green as the slope steepened, the mount taking it in its stride. At that point, the bright sun had been smothered by overbearing clouds. The woods had faded to an impartial grey and brown as snow began to thicken on the ground below. Still, they carried on until they emerged out onto the side of a gorge. The river they’d been following terminated over a cliffside, plunging into rapids below them.

“There’s the bridge,” Innie said.

The bridge in question was a similar construction to those in her own territory. A set of logs strung across the outflow from the rapids below them. It was some way down the river, and beyond its meadows lay another section of forest that hugged the western wall of the mountains. Efrain glanced down the side of the cliff, looking for a path and finally spying it at the far edge, where the land curved down.

Tykhon turned back to look at him, then down at the basin below them.

“Absolutely not,” Efrain said firmly.

“Why, what’s it doing?” said Innie from behind him.

“Knowing Carnes, it can probably scale down this cliff, or swim through the water.”

“Ah,” she said, “I for one, intend to get off before that would happen however.”

“Which is why I-” Efrain began, before glancing back to the forest beyond.

Black smoke drifted out of the where the trees curved into a crevice in the surrounding mountains.

“Is that normal Innie?” he said, pointing to the plume.

“No. No it’s not,” she said, any traces of levity gone from her voice.

Efrain wheeled Tykhon and set them off in the direction of the slope. They quickly reached it and cleared the trees, Tykhon speeding up in the open terrain. Efrain decided to allow the uncomfortable rate, shooting past the bridge and turning into the forest.

The trees blurred again as they sped south, Efrain speaking over the back.

“I hope that your fellow matron is not in a terrible mood.”

“She wouldn’t be setting fires if she was calm, Efrain.”

Efrain tried not to think about what a poor reception from a wisp-mother would look like. Tykhon had to slow to account for the forest paths they entered into the old growth. Soon, they had rounded the curve the cliff side and were beginning to slope up and out, finally breaking into chaos.

Trees had been levelled, turned to smoking bars of charcoal. Any trace of a meadow with flowers like Innie’s had been thoroughly been blasted off the face of the world. Pits and craters were carved out of the earth, still-glowing embers settling in their depths.

The clearing was littered by the charred corpses of unknown creatures. Some of the bones Efrain recognized as roughly human, but so throughly immolated that Efrain couldn’t say much more than that. At the far end of the clearing, a cairn had been constructed of large stone slabs.

On top of one of those slates, lay a ball of golden fire. Something was wrong with it, however, as it sagged and sputtered against the stone. Innie without a word hopped off Tykhon and raced wards it, her own form having grown suffused with flame.

Efrain for his part, stepped down more cautiously, glancing around at the remnants of whatever conflict had been fought here. Several wisps began to drift out of the trees, darting around with conspicuous panic. Efrain approached the dais of rock, Innie softly circling the weakened wisp-mother.

“Innialysia?” it murmured, as if just awakening from a deep sleep.

“It’s me Kalnive,” she said, “what happened?”

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said.

The older wisp-mother rose slowly, swirling and condensing into a more vibrant flame.

“You should be tending to your own little ones,” she said.

The voice was indeed older, giving Efrain the image of some elderly grandmother, rather than Innie’s patronizing matronly voice.

“I came to seek you out for advice,” she said, taking on a tone that was a good deal more respectful than Efrain had ever heard.

“I was attacked,” said Kalnive, who limped into the recesses of the den.

“By what, suicidal hunters?” asked Efrain as he stepped up over the ridge.

The wisp-mother skirted away from the new presence, before Innie swirled protectively around her. Whispers passed between the two, of a nature that Efrain could barely understand.

“You will help,” it said, its voice scratching and fading.

“I will?” said Efrain.

“In the valley… more of them… find them… destroy them… they…”

The words faded to a whisper, then nothing as the flames curled inward, painting the inside of the cairn with glowing dust. A tiny flame remained, gently wavering in the depths of the the tomb. Innie looked back at him, caught between cat and flame, before darting past him into the ruined grove.

“Let’s go,” she called back, with a tone that suggested that she’d brook no argument.

“This is not what I meant when I said I wanted an excursion,” complained Efrain, as he followed Innie to where Tykhon stood.