A bright flash of light.

Spinning.

Darkness.

Two purple eyes glaring at me through the black.

Yellow liquid pouring down across my body.

Nothing.

Silence.

I gasped in terror, my eyes fluttering open as I stared at the ceiling of my father's lab.

Somehow, I was laying on the ground, my back screaming.

My eyes ached and it felt like something sharp was digging into the backs of my eyeballs deep inside my brain. I covered both of my eyes with my hands and tried to sit up. As I did, the room lurched to the left and to the right, back and forth, endlessly.

I turned to the side and threw up, that lurching feeling never stopping as I did so. Squinting my eyes, I examined my surroundings. Everything that had been on the worktable was now scattered across the same place I was. The floor.

Surrounding me, everything was either shattered or pushed all the way back to the walls and the corners of the room.

Looks like something exploded in here.

I stood up, searching the tabletops for my father’s notebook, trying to find the Lumadex, hunting for the Builder’s Stone that had been in my now empty mouth. Shattered remnants of the test tubes were everywhere.

The sounding bowls with their colorful crystal-coated interiors were completely intact, tossed into a corner like they were discarded stuffed animals. And below them…

No. Please no!

Below the sounding bowls I saw a chunk of the Lumadex. Only part of it, and the part I saw had deep gashes running across the surface like something with sharp claws had lashed out at it.

I couldn't find any evidence of the Builder’s Stone. I looked everywhere. I knew what a spent witchstone looked like, what an empty looked like, but I couldn't find anything approaching that in the lab.

Maybe some stuff blew out onto the main floor.

I exited the lab and went out to the main showroom of Blackhart, looking everywhere.

What happened?

The sphere of witchstones still slowly spun at the center of Blackhart, not appearing to have changed in the slightest. Across the room, I saw a mirror. I saw my reflection. The crown of bright lights above my head, marking me as a stick, had disappeared. It was gone.

A smile tugged at the corners of my lips.

It had been worth it. I was no longer a stick. The proof was staring back at me from the mirror.

“It worked,” I whispered. “It actually worked.”

Something had finally gone my way.

I’m a wizard now.

I would be able to do whatever I needed to ensure that the theatre stayed under my control.

You don’t have the money to buy the theatre.

Like money mattered anymore. I didn’t need to buy the theatre. I could threaten anyone who showed even the slightest sign that they wanted to take the theatre.

You could probably rob a bank and get away with it. Buy the theatre that way.

I flexed my fingers and wondered how being a wizard worked, wondered what I would need to do in order to cast my first spell.

I walked to the center of the showroom and stood beneath the slowly rotating sphere of witchstones.

I scoffed at the chained rings that lay at my feet. I didn’t need them. I had magick now. I was a wizard and the world would bend to my will, not vice versa. I traced my fingers through the air and spread my fingers wide to make the sphere move on its own accord.

The sphere didn't budge.

I frowned. Uh, Okay. So that didn't work.

I glanced over at the mirror again, making sure the bright crown of light was gone and not just dimmer for the moment.

There was no crown, but I did have several large shards of glass in my hair. They looked more solid, like maybe they were shards of the Lumadex?

I lifted my hand up and gingerly felt around, not wanting to cut myself. What I felt beneath my fingertips was something hard, something foreign, something connected to and sticking out of my head.

My stomach gave a little lurch.

Maybe when you passed out some of the Lumadex embedded itself in your skull. Maybe you’re injured.

I pushed this thought aside.

Wizards must have to have some way of protecting themselves, right? Some way of healing themselves?

I touched the hard object sticking out of my head, gripped it, before realizing it had a perfect twin on the other side.

I ran my finger along the edge of one of the shards embedded in my head and just as quickly brought it away. Staring at my finger, I shook my head.

So sharp you barely felt it.

Blood welled from a deep slice on my right pointer finger.

I popped the finger into my mouth, sucking on it, as I walked over to the mirror to better inspect what was happening with those things in my head.

As I got closer to the mirror, my blood ran cold. Nothing had embedded itself in my skull. Unless two perfectly symmetrical objects had flown out from the Lumadex and embedded themselves in my skull.

I swallowed.

Horns.

I was looking at horns. I was looking at horns protruding from my head. Sharp horns, horns that could cut flesh, and had. My flesh.

These weren’t horns in the traditional sense, though. There were no ridges or curling. I didn’t look like a reindeer or a ram. The horns were probably only an inch and a half tall and looked just like the tips of knives, although a smidge thicker, sticking out of my head about an inch or so back from my hairline and about five inches apart.

My upper lip curled back at the horns’ bone white coloring. An image of teeth growing out of my head popped into my mind and my stomach churned.

Is this what being a wizard is? Having horns?

The worst part of it all was that I couldn't even look that up now. My Lumadex had been destroyed. I'd had it for less than an hour and now it was gone.

Staring at my reflection, I saw that something else had changed.

The crystal at the end of the silver chain my father had given me so long ago was shattered, only a vague chunk left where it had been mounted.

I shook my head as I tried to figure out what I was supposed to do next.

Lumadex destroyed.

Builder’s Stone vanished.

Horns erupting from my head.

What now?

Suddenly, my idea to use the Builder’s Stone didn't seem like the best of ideas. Suddenly, it felt like I may have made a huge mistake, one I might not recover from. With the witchstone gone and no Lumadex to instruct me as to what I should do next, what was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to go?

Geist will be expecting you.

Any gateway I went through out in the market would more than likely return me right back to Geist's location.

I couldn't hide from him. I couldn't hide from the Austerium. As far as I was concerned, they were the same.

After taking a deep breath, I let it out in a shuddering sigh as tears came to my eyes. Tears of confusion, of concern. I hadn’t thought this through.

“What do I do now?” I muttered to myself. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

From behind me, a deep voice whispered, “Crying won’t help.”

I whirled around. My eyes scanned Blackhart but didn’t see anything.

“Who said that?” I asked the empty room.

No one responded.

I’d grown horns and now I was hearing voices.

Perfect. Just my luck. Every time I trust something, it lets me down. Always.

“Hello?” I tried again in the empty store. When again I stood in silence, I turned back to the mirror and my eyes crawled up to the horns.

How much longer are they going to get? How much more will they grow? Am I going to look like a reindeer?

If they started growing, I would have to grind them down, or file them, or clip them… something.

I didn't know anything about the keeping of horns. I didn't know anything about the growing of horns either, for that matter, or much about the Lumaverse, or the magick world, or the Builder’s Stone, or if I was even a wizard, or…

I shook my head with another long sigh.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked my reflection.

The deep voice returned. “If I were you,” it said and I whirled around, trying to see where it was coming from, but unable to place it, “I might wonder what I had become, and what else I could have unleashed.”

Has something else been unleashed? Is that possible?

Anything was possible as far as I was concerned. I didn't know what the limits of the magick world were.

“You might want to refer to that convenient notebook of your father's,” the deep voice said.

It was coming through the doorway of the secret lab, drawing me in, but I couldn’t seem to stop my feet from moving in that direction. I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason not to. The voice was right. I should probably inspect the notebook and find out if there was something I'd skipped, something I'd overlooked.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Oh,” the voice said, “we’re going to become good friends, you and me. We’ve quite a way to go. Many conversations to have. Much time to spend together.”

“What is this?” I asked.

When the voice answered, I could tell that it was smiling. It was amused with what I'd asked.

“This?” the voice asked. “This is Blackhart. It's your father's. Well, it's yours, for now, assuming you're not going to be exiled from the magick world.”

“Exiled?” I asked, realizing what this might look like to anyone else. A girl with horns stumbling around a destroyed lab, looking for a notebook, and having conversations with herself.

“I didn't stutter,” the voice said.

“Can you be exiled from the magick world?”

“I was, long ago.”

“You’re exiled?” I asked, finding the notebook but not opening it yet.

“Into that witchstone. I was something to behold in my time, something, someone.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“What are you now?”

“Your familiar.”

“And a familiar is… what exactly?”

A laugh erupted from the corner where a dark shadow was moving. A thick, inky shadow without form. It stretched from the floor all the way up to the ceiling, but there were no defined edges, no eyes, no teeth. Thankfully.

“Don't worry about what a familiar is right now. I believe you're looking for your father's notebook and you found it. You might want to open up to the second page.”

I did as the voice suggested, not having any reason not to. On the second page there was a warning. My father's neat manuscript spelled out the following sentence:

Beware of cursed witchstones. Any witchstone containing a curse is likely to be indecipherable in regard to stonebreaking to all but the most astute.

“The Builder’s Stone was cursed?” I asked.

“What color does yellow lume represent?” the voice asked in response.

I closed my eyes. “Yellow is a curse. But… but at the end of the notebook it said that the Builder’s Stone was yellow, blue, and purple. I saw all of those crystals in the sounding bowl.”

“So, you did. Unfortunately, you didn't fully dispel the curse. You didn't fully read the instructions your father left regarding stonebreaking. Read the rule about vibration.”

I flipped to the page and reread the rule aloud.

“Continue with sounding bowls until vibration does not occur at all. Use as many sounding bowls as it takes until no crystals are seen inside the bowls.” Shaking my head, I glanced up to the dark corner. “But I used those. I used the sounding bowls. The very last one should have dispelled the curse, right?”

The voice laughed. “Read the rule again.”

Frowning, I bent my head and did as instructed, this time the key points of the rule registering. I had assumed that when I saw that single, tiny crystal in the last bowl that the Builder’s Stone was depleted. Apparently, the curse couldn't be said to be successfully depleted until an empty bowl was returned.

I closed my eyes with a sigh. In my hasty greed, I’d done this to myself. I’d effectively cursed myself.

“It's not all bad,” the voice said in response. “You've got me now, and I've got you…”

The voice let out a deep, rumbling laugh and the shadow in the corner solidified. A shape emerged from the shadows and I sucked in a deep breath.