A few minutes later Naia acceded to the request, though his discontent with the vagueness of the offer was made clear. He left, promising that the troops would be ready in a few hours. Efrain, for his part, decided to return to the ridge where he’d watched the sunrise, the sky already lightening to a pale blue. It was warmer here down the Stairway, despite the occasional deposits of snow. Efrain tapped on the rock, missing the solidity of his throne, however nice the view was.

“What exactly is the plan here?” Innie said, sitting next to him on the rock as her tail twitched back and forth.

“I don’t actually know. I’m… what’s the term? ‘Improvising’.”

“All that effort and you don’t even have a plan,” she said, stretching.

“I’m feeling oddly optimistic about the whole affair, actually,” he said, echoing the words of the flesh lord, “in fact, I think there’s a real possibility here.”

“You’re saying a lot of words without saying much,” she said, rolling over onto her back.

“Okay,” Efrain said, as he rubbed his hands together, “here’s how I see it. I’ve secured an admittedly tenuous relation with this commander - hopefully that means we keep the paladins off my back. I guide them out of their little predicament, the name ‘Efrain’ hopefully goes on the short list of ‘mages not to kill on sight.”

“The assumption of ‘not going to have your head lopped off once you’ve exhausted your uses’ is a generous one.”

“Why do you think I directed them to the green road? Worst case scenario, Tykhon takes us into the forest. You’ve seen how fast he can move in the trees. Barring a surprise up their own sleeve, there’s no way they could catch up.”

“And you’re also assuming that the green-folk would be sympathetic to us.”

“You’re a wisp-mother, I’m a mage. I haven’t burned down a forest, have you? I’ll bank on their sympathy over the religious zealots’.”

“And what happens once you get them through the green road? Do you finally return to the Vale, or continue on?”

“Even if I followed them all the way to Angorrah, what would it matter? It’s what? A two, three-month journey? Blink of the eye.”

She groaned as she rolled over once again.

“You can’t be actually thinking of going to Angorrah, right? That’d be begging for a knife in your back.”

Efrain was about to respond with a rather circuitous argument how that it would actually be the last thing they’d expect. After all, who would look for a mage that was within a city that had been famously purged of such people? His costume could easily be disregarded as eccentric, at least for a short time. That was halted when someone coughed behind him.

He turned to see a young girl, no later than her teenage years, holding her arms and shivering in the morning chill. Her eyes were cast downward as she walked up the hill, and her expression had a distracted, murky character that might’ve suggested fever. She walked straight past them, seemingly without noticing either the cat or the man.

Efrain and Innie sat in silence as the girl mumbled indeterminately to herself.

All of a sudden she became conscious of their presence.

“Oh, um, hello,” she said, “uh… where am I?”

“You’re on a hill. The camp’s down that way,” said Efrain, gesturing to the collections of tents down the hill.

“Right,” she said, teeth chattering, “I-I guess I’ll go back.”

Her eyes were a dark blue-green, darting about like a frightened animal. Efrain thought he recognized the shape of her face, as well as colour and thickness of her hair. Then it clicked.

“Are you ‘Aya’ by any chance?”

The girl started forward, then rocked back - Efrain was afraid that she might run away all together.

“No need to be afraid,” he reassured her, “I didn’t mean to scare you. You must be cold.”

“No, it’s not the cold,” she said, “it’s… something else.”

“Oh, do tell. I love mysteries,” Efrain said, earning him a trite glance from his feline companion.

“Why not?” she shrugged, the movement jerky and aggressive, “everything’s a mystery. I’m a mystery. My dreams are a mystery. My mother and I were nearly killed by monsters, and no one will explain a thing.”

Efrain absorbed the information almost gleefully, as he sat forward to take a closer look at the girl.

“I was just thinking the same… well, a similar thing.”

“Oh, really?”

Efrain took a moment to consider the statement, and deciding that it was indeed true, he continued.

“You three, you and the two other children that were with you, are a mystery. In fact, I'd say you are the most interesting conundrum that I've happened on in a long time.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” the girl blustered.

“Well, I don't think I can explain it to you in a way that you would properly understand. Just how curious your situation is, I mean. Not that that's an imposition upon your intelligence, mind you,” he quickly added.

The girl sat on a rock across from him as the sun fully crested over the mountain peaks. The light caught her eye and for a moment, Efrain thought he saw a vibrant blue rise from within their depths. She turned her head, wincing at the sudden brightness, and Efrain dismissed the colour as a mere trick of the light.

“Try me,” she said, giving him an exhausted smile that indicated she was open to anyone that would give her answers.

Efrain laced his fingers and cocked his head, his standard procedure for explanations.

“Well, I suppose I might as well try,” he said, giving a momentary side-glance to ensure that no paladins were gallanting up the hill, “in that case, what do you know about magic?”

“Magic?” the girl said, “ not much, just stories.”

“Like?”

Efrain was expecting a barrage of old wives tales about witches living in the forests and weaving curses. Maybe something about a monster that went bump in the night for good measure.

“My mother always told me that there were a group of mages in Karkos. I think they have a proper guild, or they did anyway.”

“That’s it?”

“She said that they kept to themselves, and that I should leave them well enough alone,” she said, eyes hardening at a perceived slight.

“Anything else?”

“No, nothing.”

Efrain chuckled at the image of that Karkosian guild, wondering which cast-off from Angorrah had founded it. He hoped that he hadn’t had a inadvertent influence on it when last he was there. Unlikely, he decided, but perhaps something to inquire about when he might next be in the port.

“I doubt you have much to fear from mages in Karkos, except maybe boring lectures.”

“Wouldn’t be too different from the sermons,” she said, teeth audibly clacking.

Efrain watched in silence, as another bead of sweat crept down her temple.

“Interesting,” he said.

“What’s ‘interesting’?” she said, as she rolled her shoulders in discomfort.

“Did you know its possible to ‘see’ magic?” Efrain said, gesturing around vaguely, “it’s not a common skill, although in theory most people should be able to learn it.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” said Aya.

“You and your… siblings? Compatriots,” Efrain corrected when she shook her head, “have the most unique magic I’ve ever seen. It looks like…”

Efrain, instead of describing it, decided to hold out his hand. Imagining heat, sandy deserts, red metal, and letting his rampant curiosity fuel it. The air above it rippled and shimmered with the sudden warmth.

“That’s what most normal people’s magic looks like. Like… a sheet of water over your body. Blurry, almost. In general, the more defined it is, the more precise the flow, the more bright it is, the more power it has. Hardly a in-depth gauge of magical power or skill, but it gives a broad indication. Yours… looks like this.”

He drew the heat between his two hands and spun a bright glowing filament.

“Like a glowing cage.”

The girl’s eyes went wide at the display, fingers falling limp at the distraction.

“So I wondered what you were-” Efrain began, before noticing that the girl wasn’t moving at all. Innie sat up, no doubt also seeing the magic around the girl’s body spasming and pulsing white. She hopped off as Efrain walked over to the girl and knelt in front of her.

“Efrain, what is this?”

“I have no idea,” Efrain said, trying to keep the hints of rapt fascination from the voice. Carefully, he attempted to move her arm which, despite its apparent slackness, was as rigid as rock.

“Why can’t she move?” said Innie as she sniffed at the girl.

“She’s having some sort of… seizure, I think. Still breathing though,” he said as he lay a hand on her forehead, “cold as ice.”

“Efrain,” Innie said, pawing at the girl’s sleeve, which drew back to reveal scars that glowed with ethereal light. Efrain could practically smell the magic pulsing from within.

“Well, what do we have here?” he said, running a finger across the rough indents.

“Those are not natural,” Innie said, hackles raised at the things.

“And yet she was born with them and they grew with her. According to her mother, anyway,” he mused, trying once more to move the arm, with no effect, “can’t get much more natural than that.”

“That’s not funny Efrain. This looks like some sort of curse.”

“Nope. What it looks like is anametic etching.”

“You think these are writ-Memory? Look at them! It’s practically a geyser of magic.”

“I said they looked like anametic etching,” Efrain said, unwilling to cede ground on the technical term, “I didn’t say they were a typical case. Can you hear me Aya?”

He waved a hand in front of the girl’s half-closed eyes, which prompted no response.

“They should be evaporating instantly from the output,” Innie grumbled.

“Which means, she have massive magical capacity,” Efrain finished for her.

“And she’s somehow not exploding from within from the flow. What are we going to do?”

“Anametic etching isn’t supposed to interfere with consciousness. Not much we can do right now to undo it, but, we could…”

The cat looked up at him, first in annoyed expectancy, then in wide-eyed horror.

“No. No way.

“Aren’t you curious?”

“For all you know, you could permanently damage her mind.”

“I’ll be careful. Besides, might be happening already.”

“Efrain, she is not some rat for you to dissect!”

“Look,” Efrain said, “if I have any hope of ‘treating’ her, for lack of a better word, I need to know as much as possible about… whatever this is. Since I can’t really ask the girl right now, I see no harm in taking a peek.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Suit yourself,” Efrain said, as he began to wrap the flood of magic around his own arm.

“Wake me up if she stops breathing,” he said, as the magic flowed into his head and his vision began to darken.