“I’m still not happy about it.”

“Too bad. I don’t think that anybody around these parts would give us help willingly. Frankly, you were too nice, considering how much money you gave them.”

“Couldn’t we at least have stolen nicer clothes?” Belle looked at the rags that she was wearing with a mournful expression. They were nothing more than potato sacks that were crudely fashioned into potato sacks with holes. Sure, it covered her body completely, but the weather was going to grow colder in the coming days, and she was already shivering from the chilly breeze that blew through the city.

“Again, it’s not stealing, it’s a forced purchase. They’ll be able to buy food for a couple of months, whereas you spent an absurd amount of money to look like a peasant.”

“I’m going to punch you.”

“Don’t be like that. You know as well as I do that a witch around these parts would get killed the moment she was seen. But humans think that witches are unbreakably proud, and would never stoop to become a peasant. It’s the perfect disguise, don’t you agree?”

Belle controlled her urge to strangle the dragon, instead rubbing her hands together to recover a little bit of warmth. The beast, once a majestic, colossal embodiment of chaos and power was currently snuggled up on her shoulder, the size of a lizard. “Speaking of pride, don’t you feel any shame looking like that?”

Dara yawned. “Shame? This is the first time I’ve been able to have a good rest in a century. When I’m in my larger form, people keep on asking me for rides to places.” Belle could feel his eyes digging into the back of her neck.

“It was your choice to follow me.” The dragon let out a couple of grumbles in response, none loud enough for Belle to hear. She dropped the conversation before Dara got heated, and started walking faster down the street.

Intigo was called the “City of Magic”, but Belle couldn’t help but feel that was an exaggeration at best. There were vestiges of magic left throughout the city; the lanterns had scuffed protection sigils on them, and the windows of important buildings had some minor bindings on them. Overall, however, she couldn’t think of them as anything other than amateurish. She’d heard that the humans had fallen out of the practice, but she hadn’t realized it was this bad.

To her surprise, however, there was still a large amount of magic emanating from somewhere in the city. It was pure and unused, a shining beacon of light to all those who practiced magic. Belle was a little bit curious about it, and more than a little thankful for it. It was so bright that it made all magical detection in the city fuzzy, allowing her to use minor magics without worrying about being detected.

Of course, she still took every precaution known to witch. That was why she was skulking around the city at dawn, when few were awake, and even fewer were patrolling the streets. So far she’d only seen one or two town guards, and none of them were vigilant. It had been simple to walk around them unnoticed, or even past them without arousing their suspicions.

The reason that she was walking around the city at its coldest was because she was dowsing. Almost abruptly, as though Belle had reached a number in her head, she turned right and entered a small, dark alley. She kept walking for a couple of seconds, then looked behind her. She relaxed slightly as no one appeared around the corner.

With a sigh, Belle took out several supplies from the pockets that were sewn into the clothes. At least there was one good thing about them.

In front of her, she assembled seven twigs of birch, five moss-eating beetle corpses, and one clump of yellow panther fur. Keeping a lookout for any witnesses, she put the materials in a circle around her and began to let out a small chant. Normally she wouldn’t need one for a spell this small, but the absence of the World Tree was significant. The mana that normally rushed into her as soon as she opened herself as a conduit trickled in. In the interest of time, she prodded it with the words of the forgotten language, speeding the process up.

“Al gamla tahiti!” Belle finished the chant with a flourish, and the materials that surrounded her evaporated into a mist, condensing into a small ball that appeared in front of her. She gave a small smile of satisfaction as it slowly wandered out of the alley, weaving from side to side like a drunkard.

“Took you long enough.” Dara muttered.

“Shut up. You know as well as I do that dowsing is a game of luck. We’re extremely lucky that it only took us a day.” Belle waited for a second before following the little ball of light into the street, squinting as the now-risen sun shined directly in her face. “And I’ve never really had the best luck.”

“Says the girl who has me by her side.” Dara let out a snort of pride.

“Exactly.”

“That’s extremely rude.”

The duo bantered as they followed the little ball down the street, meandering from side to side. It passed through a passing fish salesman, lingered for a bit, and then continued onwards.

“Not to complain, but can’t you speed it up?”

Belle sighed. “I wish. That’s the problem with dowsing. Not only is it incredibly time consuming and reliant on chance, following the damn thing is enough to drive someone mad. Theoretically, I should be able to increase the radius of the spell to the entire city, but that would take a huge amount of energy, and then we would have to follow that thing for an entire day.” The witch gave it a dirty look as she shuffled on the road, barely moving with each step.

The little dowsing ball continued down the street, and after a painful couple of minutes stopped in front of a little building and flickered out of existence. Belle walked up to it and took a good look at the place that supposedly had information on the witch they were looking for.

It was inconspicuous. Suspiciously inconspicuous, in fact.

It was nothing but a red brick building with a couple of shattered windows. If Belle hadn’t been looking, she would have thought that it was abandoned. But after closer inspection, she noticed a very small sign above the door that read, “Cheap bear.” She dearly hoped that meant beer.

“Well, it looks like we made it. Are you going to go in?” Dara had a tone of disinterest, but Belle knew that he was as skeptical of the place as she was.

“I don’t think we have a choice. Even if it is a trap, I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve. I’m going to need you to be quiet from now on.” She shoved the dragon deeper into her tunic and walked forwards, towards the dubious bar. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the building, and was greeted with a long, dark stairway down. She peered down, hoping to see the bottom, but was only greeted with darkness.

“That’s ominous.” She muttered. With a tentative step, she slowly made her way down the stairs. She had only made her way down five before she heard a slamming sound behind her. Belle turned around, and saw that the door had slammed behind her. With her heart in her throat, she continued downwards.

With each footfall, she descended a little bit more into the darkness, until she found herself drowning in black, her sense of sight completely gone. She tried to find a handhold of some sort, but none were available, leaving her stranded and alone. Belle sighed, and took another step down. To her surprise, her foot found flat ground, and her hand found a flat stone wall.

She held one hand in front of her to guide her way, the other in one of her pockets in case this was an ambush. Prepared for anything, she followed the wall and continued down the hallway, her stride controlled and cautious.

Her hand brushed something wooden, and Belle stopped in her tracks. She took a minute to inspect the new wall, looking for any sort of trap that would trigger if she walked past it. To her surprise, it seemed to be an ordinary wooden door, resting on unbelievably rusty hinges. Holding her breath, Belle pushed it inwards, prepared for anything.

Brilliant orange light flooded her eyes, and she had to take a step back. After a second of blinking and squinting, vision returned to her, and she realized what she’d walked into.

It was a bar. A brilliantly lit bar, covered wall to wall in torches that emitted a staggering glow. The room itself was cozy, not so vast as to dwarf the amount of clientele, but not uncomfortably small. The furniture and floor were remarkably unmarked, every stool and the bar counter itself polished to an impeccably clean standard.

This was in stark contrast to the customers, who could not be described as ‘clean’ in any context. This was not the sort of bar that primpy nobles came to get their weekend fun-times in; everybody who was drinking here looked like they had fought their way out of the womb, covered with numerous scars, and more weaponry than a well-stocked armory.

More importantly, they were all staring at Belle. Half of them were standing, swords and daggers unsheathed, clearly expecting a fight. All thoughts of fighting fled Belle’s brain, and she stood in the doorway, mouth open and failing to form complete sentences.

The standoff lasted no more than a couple of seconds before one of the men nearest to the door, a warrior with one eye, scoffed. “Really, Vint? This is the dangerous magician that you talked about? She barely looks eighteen, never mind rich enough to be a magic caster.” With a grumble, he returned to his table and threw himself into a chair. “I swear, if you waste my time one more time…”

A long, raspy sigh came from behind Belle. She jumped and turned around, seeing a younger man in flowing white robes. “For the last time, magic detection simply doesn’t work in this cursed city. Of course I’m going to have false alarms now and then. That isn’t an excuse for lack of vigilance. After all, as our Lady in the scripture says, ‘Thou who art ill-possessed to watch, reap the least.’ This is, of course, referring to--”

The man, who Belle gathered was a priest, was interrupted by an empty mug being chucked at his head. He ducked, and let out an adorable squeal. “Y-You ruffians! You’re lucky that the Church thinks that you’re strong enough to get paid!”

The one-eyed man let out a chortle. “And you’re lucky we don’t roast your head on a spit for all the sermons you give.” The group of men around him laughed along with him, but most of the others in the tavern seemed to keep their eyes to themselves, ignoring the conflict.

Belle stood at the doorway, still dumbstruck from the strange place that she’d found herself in. She quickly snapped out of it, however; if there was one thing that she’d learned well from growing up in the Grove, it was that surprise could easily kill you. In as casual a manner as she could muster, she walked towards the bar, careful to not to step too near to any of the other customers.

As she observed the scene, making sure she didn’t stare at one person for too long, she noticed something odd about the tavern. More accurately, something odd about its patrons. Every single person that she saw, regardless of gender, size, or apparent profession had the same sigil on them somewhere. A phoenix, surrounded by intricate patterns of flames, and some kind of saying beneath it.

For the hooded giant that sat in the corner, murmuring to himself, it was a small medallion on his collar. The teenage girl with eyes of steel had a tattoo on her face, green and vibrant. Others had them on necklaces, bracelets, or clothes that had the sigil sewn in. All slightly different variations on the same design, but unmistakably similar. Belle racked her brain for some sort of clue as to what it meant, but couldn’t find anything.

She reached the bar, and sat down on the stool. For all its pristine appearance, it still made a jarring squeaking sound. Looking across the counter, she saw a large, muscled, tanned man, presumably the bartender. He looked at her dubiously, and in a booming voice, asked, “Do you even have any money to buy drink with?”

Belle frowned. “Of course I do. What do you take me for, a peasant?”

The bartender raised his eyebrow. “Yes?”

Belle looked down, and remembered her clothing situation. With a heavy blush, she brought out her coin purse, enchanted to always seem slimmer than it was. She clapped two heavy bronze coins down on the table, this country’s currency.

Faster than a quickrane catching a fish, the bartender’s hand scooped the coins off the counter. He brought one up to his eye, and caught the light with it. “This is old. Very old.” He looked back to Belle, as if evaluating her in a new light. “Where did you find this?”

Belle just gave him a dumb little smile. “It’s just a coin, right?” She stared right back into his eyes, refusing to back off.

After a couple seconds of intense staring, the bartender sighed, and pocketed the change. “You should look more carefully at what you’re given. Sometimes, money can be more dangerous than its worth.”

It was Belle’s turn to raise her eyebrow. “Are you telling me that the coin was valuable?”

“Just valuable enough to buy a night’s worth of drinks at The Cantankerous Tankard.” The bartender let out a deep laugh. “What’ll it be? Beer or ale?”

“Water’s fine.” Belle relaxed inwardly as the bartender shuffled off to go get her a mug. It was a good thing that she’d given him the bronze ones, and not the coins that were made of gold. It was clear that she was going to have to be more careful with how she bought things from now on.

“Don’t mind Barky, eh? He’s more bark than he is bite.” The man to Belle’s right howled with laughter at his joke. The bartender shot him a glare, to no avail.

Belle faced him, and instinctively shrunk back a little bit. The man was a giant. Not literally; if he was, his head would be poking out of the roof, but large nonetheless. He was clearly from the deserts to the south of the continent, evidenced by his dark skin and black, braided hair. Every inch of his skin seemed to contain a skin on it somewhere, and his arms especially seemed to bear whip marks.

The man’s eyes caught Belle’s, and his voice boomed. “Ah, curious about these?” He held his arms up to the light, showing the terrifying wounds in detail. “I got these back when I was a slave to the damn Northerners. Absolute scum, I tell you.” He let out another deep chuckle. “Still, they were nice enough to get me a job here, so I’m not about to curse them out too deeply.”

Belle paused. “You were a slave?” A mug slid in front of her, courtesy of Barky, and she took a long sip, hoping that she didn’t catch the plague.

“Of course, like every other Siddithi out there. Spoils of the war, eh? Nothing strange about it in the least.” He took a long draught of his stout, but his expression clearly soured. “Uncivilized though, the Northerners. Sending their prisoners to do their dirty work?” He harrumphed with disapproval.

“I’d ask you kindly to stop disparaging our lovely clientele, Stav. If any of them start breaking things, I’ll put it on your tab.” Barky interjected mildly.

“Hah! If any of those goat-legged assholes have the balls to take me on, then they’re free to do so! Outside of the bar, of course.” Stav added hastily, after seeing Barky’s look.

Belle looked on at the banter with interest, and not a small amount of confusion. The library in the Grove had been outdated by many centuries, as had the currency apparently. Last that she’d heard, the only people that lived in the north were small tribes, barely large enough to survive, nevermind conquer. How in the world had they managed to become an empire?

“But enough of myself! You, girl. Why did you come here?” Stav leaned in with interest, and Belle leaned back, almost falling off her stool.

This was going to be a problem. She cleared her throat, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “Same reason that everybody did, obviously.”

Stav sat back and looked at her appraisingly, much like Barky had. “Are you sure that you have the strength for it? Any respectable Burner should be able to punch a few heads in, no?”

Belle blushed, genuinely incensed. “I wouldn’t underestimate me in a fight. Not if you want to stay alive.”

Stav blinked. For a brief moment, Belle thought that she had messed up. Then he roared with laughter. “Hah! It’s good to see that someone here grew a spine. Everybody around here is too stiff, too scared. I’ll be happy to see the place liven up a little.” He emptied his next mug, his fifth if Belle was counting correctly.

Barky came back over, with a small piece of paper. In a monotone voice, as though he was giving a lecture he’d told a hundred times, he said, “Here’s the form for signing up. Don’t worry if you can’t read; it’s everything that the recruiter told you. In return for working for the Tevali Empire, under the Temple of the Phoenix, you will be pardoned for any crimes you have committed, and any that you will commit that serve to better the Empire.” He pointed to a small box at the bottom of the slip of paper. “Put a drop of your blood right there and you’re set.”

Belle looked at the paper closely. There were a lot of things that you could do with a witch’s blood, if you knew how to use it. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any sort of magical contract woven into the fibers of the paper, or any sort of trap. At most, they would be able to use the blood to track her, and she had ways of getting around that.

Joining the ‘Burners’, whatever they might be, was the way to get answers. She didn’t know what she was looking for, and any one of these people could hold the key to the puzzle. Still, that didn’t mean she was going to sign anything until she knew more. “And how much, exactly, would I get paid for this job?”

Barky let out a long, irritated sigh. “Whoever your recruiter was needs to get a dressing down. This job is based on commission. The more sorcerers, witches, and magicians you bring in, the more money you get.”

Belle jumped, almost jolting out of her seat. “Witches!?”

“Hah! Don’t worry, girl. You’ll be facing half-trained sewer rats for the most part. Hardly a challenge, but finding them is the hard part.” Stav gave a large grin, and put a meaty hand on her shoulder. “I can even take you under my wing, teach you a couple of tricks to put them down quickly.”

Barky tapped at the paper once more. “Choose quickly, girl. I don’t have all the time in the world.”

A witch-hunter. Stories flew through Belle’s mind, books and tomes from the Grove that spoke of a witch’s greatest enemy. Not just any human, but the ones that put them to flame on stakes, the ones that subjected them to the harshest of torture out of fear.

The contract in front of her offered a way to save the Grove. But in doing so, she would be abandoning everything she knew. Hunting down her own kind, in word if not in principle.

Belle’s hand shook as she drew a knife from one of her pockets, and pricked a tiny hole in her thumb. A scarlet ball emerged, glistening in the golden light.

There was barely a second's hesitation. She held her breath, and she pressed her thumb down onto the paper.