Sparrow Truman May 20th,20xx

Agonizing screams echoed out of the dungeons and trigged a pain in my heart. A painful form of guilt wracked across my brain and made me curl into a ball. It increased in intensity with every accompanying second of noise.

Other witches around me were similarly curled up on the floor, unconscious from the blast of magic that had erupted from the dungeon. Most of them were fully unconscious but a few retained awareness and softly called out for help, unable to muster a shout.

Rubella had stormed out to the courtyard in a huff, hurrying after a witch that had come to deliver a message to her. It was only a few minutes after she had brushed past the courtyard that the blast of magic had suddenly erupted from the dungeons.

The screaming stopped just as suddenly as it started and I felt my connection with Ion cut off as well. He was probably unconscious.

Another violent blast of magic, much more intense than the last, knocked out whatever wind of resistance I’d had left and I blacked out for a few minutes.

I awoke to the sensation of Iren’s sharp scales prickling my skin as he slithered all over me, trying to wake me up. Its small tongue flicked in and out of its mouth and onto my cheek. It was a good thing I had applied a poison resistant cream to myself before coming out today.

He was still young so it wasn’t too toxic, but it would have still hurt if I hadn’t been careful.

With a low groan, I gently pushed the snake away from me and hobbled onto my feet. Flying would be impossible since the magic in the air was too unstable to risk it, so I had to walk.

My feet trembled with every step and my head pounded like a goblin blacksmith’s hammer.

I needed to get down to the dungeon and reconnect with my vine. While it wasn’t a perfect recording machine, it could at least give me an idea of what had happened if the prince was unconscious or was unwilling to talk.

The possibility that the prince had died wasn’t one I was willing to entertain, but him having shocked himself into a coma wasn’t as unlikely.

The vine should have sucked out all the magic but what he needed to live; him being able to bypass that and cause such a magical explosion either meant that something went wrong with my spell… or he had used the little magic he had left to blow up the vine, at the cost of his own life.

The closer I got to the dungeon, the more broken down the place looked. Walls crumbling over one another and massive gaps in the flooring. A thick smog of cement dust invaded my lungs and made me cough loudly, causing further harm to my throat as it attempted to clear itself.

I brought out my wand and began to vacuum the fog around me. It all went into a fragile bubble that I had to keep right beside me but that was the best I could do. The only other alternative would be a stronger bubble, but the magic in the air was too unstable for me to make one, or transportation magic, which I hadn't mastered yet.

The dungeon was empty. Not a body to be found.

I ran over to the ragged remains of the vines that had held the prince captive and reconnected to it, trying to get a sense of what had happened.

If anyone was to find out that the prince had died in our care then never mind just the fairies but even the goblins might take it into their hands to wipe the witches out of existence. The Goblins and fairies had never worked together in a war, and us witches preferred it that way.

Odd, fractured recordings filtered into my brain from the vine.

“Finn, Sparrow needs- to- costume- Are- ready?”

My name? costume? And who was Finn?

My head intensified its pounding and for some reason, my memory seal began to fracture.

The memory packet had been completely absorbed by now but for some reason, I’d chosen to keep my memories from the human world sealed. I’d been perfectly fine without my previous memories till now hadn’t I?

Once I grew curious about my sealed memories, my head began to hurt even more and the crack deepened.

I ignored it for now and refocused on trying to piece together some more information from the vine but only got a few fragmented words that were nonsensical in nature.

Who was Jake, who was Finn? And why did those names sound so familiar to me?

Why did my heart hurt when I thought about those names? And why had the fairy that accompanied the prince look so familiar?

Overwhelmed by the feeling of painful curiosity I began to loosen the bindings on my memory bind. A single thread of magic at a time.

The spell weakened and the feelings of familiarity deepened. I tried to stay away from the areas that had begun to crack but Rubella suddenly burst into the broken-down dungeon with an enraged expression and broke my concentration with her high-pitched screech.

“What happened here! Where is the prince!”

I unconsciously took a step back from her, overcome by a strong sense of repulsion, and could barely gather my thoughts well enough to make a response.

“I'm unsure of where the fairy prince went but I do know he isn’t dead. The vine would have registered if he died while in its grasp. The most likely option is that he managed to break free of the bindings and escape with his companion.”

She visibly calmed down at my patchworked theory and dispatched the two witches at her side to go hunt him down.

“Take a squadron with you and find the little prince. He’s hurt and has that deadweight of a companion with him so he can't have gotten far.”

The entourage left quicker than she finished her order and only the two of us remained in the broken down dungeon.

Rubella paced back and forth for a few minutes before she suddenly stopped in her tracks and looked at me with a concerned expression.

“Sparrow? Are you okay? That explosion didn’t hurt you too badly did it?”

Her concern was genuine, even I could tell that much. But I couldn’t stop myself from flinching to avoid her hand as she reached out to touch me.

“I'm fine! Why are you trying to touch me?”

I tried to brush it off by sounding as irritated as usual, but she reacted differently this time. Her concerned lips flattened out into flat line and her eyes narrowed in annoyance.

“Sparrow, have you been renewing your memory bind? You know how you get when you don’t.”

'How I get?' No, I don't know.

I swallowed those words before they could be spoken and instead replied as casually as I could.

“Yeah, yeah I'll get to it.”

She gathered me into a hug like she sometimes did and began to stroke my hair. It should have been a touching moment but somehow I couldn’t help but feel disgusted. It wasn’t pure disgust. There were many mixed emotions involved but disgust was a new one.

“Just calm down a bit Sparrow. I’ll do it for you this time but you need to be more diligent with these things. I let you pass with a lot of things but this is the one thing ill insist on. It's for your good.”

I felt her magic flow into me and prepared to have my memories sealed again but for some reason, I redirected it at the last minute. Unwilling to let her mess around with my mind as she usually did.

I redirected her magic around the crack that had already formed on the spell and pretended to fall asleep once she was done.

Something was wrong. And I was sure I would need my memories to figure out what it was.