Over the past couple of weeks, Jarrett’s concussion symptoms had more or less subsided, only to be replaced by a constant, gnawing anxiety.

The mist the Ravens had conjured to keep the Vanguard stuck in Rosewood was… effective. One could only walk for fifteen minutes in any direction out of town before hitting it. Anyone who went into the mist stumbled back out an hour or two later, unable to get through. Presumably, it worked the same for anyone trying to get into Rosewood, as no one had come through from the other side.

And so as intended, they had been cut off from the rest of the world, for better and for worse. They had to be self-sufficient now more than ever. No outside food or supplies. Thankfully, the farms just outside Rosewood had been included in the perimeter of non-misted area. They were also free from attack by more soldiers for the time being, though Jarrett had no doubts that Riordan himself could come for them if he wanted to.

Not everyone was happy with his decision to oust the Ravens. It’d left them in a tight spot. Sure, they had the weapons to use against Riordan, but they couldn’t take action until the Ravens stopped their tantrum and dispelled the mist. They could no longer recruit, which was a problem after losing both the support of the Ravens and a number of their troops in the battle over the artifact cache. All they could do was keep training the forces they had, and hope to find some way out of this mess.

In the meantime, Rohan was heading the research on the artifact swords, working with a few other Vanguard mages to try to determine what they did. The intensity of the magic field inside the vault spooked everyone who went into it, so they had carefully extracted one of the swords out of it, and left the other four inside for safekeeping. Jarrett still wondered why there had been an empty plinth, but he was far more curious about what the swords could actually do for them.

Hopefully, the weapons were worth the sacrifices made to protect them. Morgane’s death still weighed heavily on him, and the Vanguard as a whole. She had kept Jarrett steady, and he’d been able to open up to her more than anyone else since he lost his memories. There were days where Jarrett wasn’t sure how to go on without both her friendship and leadership. But giving up would be an insult to everything Morgane had built, so he kept on best he could.

So far, there had been no breakthroughs with Rohan’s experiments. Jarrett tried to be optimistic about his daily meeting with him as he strolled down the street. Perhaps today, the news would be better.

Hera and Korene rushed to interrupt his path to Rohan’s house. Jarrett’s heart jumped to his throat as he wondered what emergency he’d have to deal with next. The two women weren’t a common pair. They disagreed immensely on how to handle almost every situation and were clashing more intensely than usual since the battle over the vault. The looks on their faces as they approached gave him no comfort.

“What now?” he asked them.

Hera had to catch her breath before answering. “Someone made it through the mist.”

“Two ‘someones’,” Korene corrected.

“Ravens?”

“No,” Hera said. “Well… a Raven escorted them through the mist, but he left after. He said they were recruits for us—one is a mage. The other...”

Korene crossed her arms. “The other is a mage hunter.”

Hera cleared her throat. “I don’t think he’s actually—”

“You’re just gullible.”

Jarrett waved his hands as if it could wipe away their bickering. “Where are they?”

“Town hall,” Korene said. “Leon and a couple of the others are keeping an eye on them.”

“I was on my way to meet Rohan. Can you let him know I’ll be delayed?”

The women agreed to do so, and Jarrett turned around to head to the town center instead. His mind ran wild, theorizing about who had shown up on their doorstep, and why the Ravens had let them through.

When he got to the town hall, he found Leon and the newcomers in the council room. Leon stood near the door, and the newcomers were seated at the council table. They weren’t exactly what Jarrett was expecting. They were young, a teen girl and a boy on the cusp of manhood—not an experienced mage and a hardened soldier like he had originally imagined.

The girl’s hair was a tawny blonde, tied messily back in a braid. Her eyes looked a bit glazed over, like she wasn’t quite focused on the world around her. Two vertical scars marred her cheeks, from just below her eye nearly down to her jaw. She was magebranded. She looked tiny next to the boy, who was bulky with muscle. His head was shorn close to his scalp, and he wore blue and gold.

“So,” Jarrett began, “who are you two, exactly?”

The newcomers glanced at each other. After the hesitation, the girl was the one to speak. “I’m Jayden. And this is Barek.”

“Why did you come here?”

Jayden continued to answer for them. “We were told that this is the home of the resistance.”

“And you wanted to find the resistance because…?”

“I’m a mage.”

“And?”

Jayden shrugged. “Isn’t that reason enough? I want to fight the king. The Tyrant.”

Jarrett gestured towards Barek. “And him?”

“I’m a defector,” he said.

“You had a change of heart?”

“I’m not sure I ever wanted to be there.”

“How can we trust you?”

“He saved me,” Jayden said. “I was captured by Saridi soldiers and taken to the capital. They were… questioning me about the rebellion. I didn’t know anything about it. But they wouldn’t give up. So Barek broke me out and we left to find the rebellion together.”

“You don’t hear much about mages breaking free once they’ve been caught,” Leon said from behind Jarrett.

The mage hunters were effective at their jobs. Fae was one of the only mages he’d met before this that had survived magebranding. Once a mage’s face was marred by the branding, it was nearly impossible to find refuge if they managed to escape the grasp of the soldiers who’d discovered them.

“Well, we’re here,” Jayden said. “And if this is the rebellion, we want to join. We risked our lives to find you, and we were barely lucky enough to come across—what are they called, the Ravens?—before we were caught. We have information and we want to help. Please.”

“We are indeed the rebellion—we call ourselves the Vanguard.” Jarrett took a seat at the table across from the newcomers. “What information do you have?”

The newcomers locked eyes again, and Jayden swallowed hard before beginning. “Riordan knows your base is here. If… if you have more than one, he doesn’t know it, but he was asking us all if there was more, and where they were.”

So Riordan did know of them. That was dire news. “You said that he was asking all of you questions. Who is ‘all of you’?”

“Other mages,” Barek said. “He has a whole prison, just for them. I was a guard there.”

“A mage prison?” Leon was aghast. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

Jarrett hadn’t heard even the faintest rumors of such a thing either. “Where? How many mages are imprisoned there?”

“I’d never heard it either until I was assigned there. It’s deep in a tunnel beneath Riordan’s castle. There were maybe… around thirty mages, when we left.”

Thirty mages that Riordan was keeping, instead of executing. Jarrett couldn’t wrap his mind around it. That was more mages than they had in the Vanguard. “So, Barek. Why free her, and not any of the other mages?”

“Most of them weren’t in much shape to travel. They are treated badly, to say the least. Plus, I was training to be a mage hunter—no one wanted to trust me. I convinced Jayden to, and that was it.”

“I see. And the Ravens, they just let you through?”

“Pretty much.” Barek looked to Jayden. She looked like she was about to collapse. They both did. “We’ve been through a lot. Could we rest before we continue?”

“Of course. We have lots of time to talk.” Jarrett stood. “After all, you’re stuck here with us now.”

#

Jarrett decided the best place to board the newcomers was at his own house, at least until more permanent arrangements were made. He could keep an eye on them that way. The council was wary of this decision. He couldn’t blame them. Accepting two strangers into his home in uncertain times was probably not his brightest idea.

In the end, he agreed to have Rohan stay with him too, for extra security. Jarrett took pity on the exhausted newcomers and let Jayden have his bedroom, and Barek the spare room. Jarrett and Rohan would sleep on the couches in the main living area. He wasn’t about to make the poor kids sleep on the floor after everything they’d gone through.

Jayden, especially. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and she had been to a mage prison—which, even from their limited conversation, seemed like a harrowing experience.

After getting the two settled into their respective rooms, Jarrett finally got a chance to confer with Rohan about the progress on the weapon research.

“There’s not much to tell, unfortunately,” Rohan told him as he searched through a pile of Jarrett’s spare blankets. “All we’ve figured out is that somehow, magic flows through the crystal. In the vault, this much is obvious. Even you could feel it down there. So, this week’s experiment was trying to store magic in the sword, to be used later by a mage.”

Rohan found the thickest woolen blanket, and laid it on the couch he’d be sleeping on. Jarrett raised an eyebrow. As miserable as the Saridian weather usually was, it was actually warm out for once. Rohan was a strange man.

“And?” Jarrett prodded.

“And, nothing. We can’t figure out how to get magic into it.”

“So that isn’t what it’s meant for.”

“It doesn’t seem so.”

“And you haven’t tried drawing blood with it yet?”

Rohan took a seat on the couch. “No. Too dangerous.” He sighed. “That’s probably the key to figuring these swords out, but who knows what it could do? If these are god slaying weapons, I could imagine a single cut killing a mortal, depending on what powers they hold.”

“Right.” Jarrett took a seat opposite Rohan and dropped his head into his hands. “We really need a win, you know? We’re just sitting here, waiting for Riordan to come get us. Jayden said that he knows about the Vanguard. That we’re here. The mist might keep out his troops, but they won’t keep out a god.”

“I know, Jarrett. I know. These swords, this crystal, it’s stumped us, but we won’t give up.”

“You’ll figure it out. There’s still time, for now.”

“Pardon me—” The voice came from Jarrett’s room, startling him. Jayden stood in the doorway, dressed in oversized clothes Jarrett had loaned her, as her own were filthy. “I didn’t mean to overhear. But I heard you say something about crystal. Are you talking about magus stone?”

“Magus stone?” Rohan asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s clear, colorless crystal,” Jayden said. “It, uh, drains magic. Or holds it. I don’t know much.”

“That might be what we’re talking about,” Jarrett said. He gestured for her to come sit with them, and she obliged, sinking into an armchair next to him. “How do you know about it?”

“They used it.” Jayden shivered. “In the mage prison.”

Rohan leaned forward. ”Used it how?”

“The prison was underground. It was in a cave of magus stone—Barek heard someone call it that—far underneath the castle. And, um…” She took a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. It’s hard to talk about.”

“It’s alright. Take your time.” Jarrett got up to pour her a cup from the teapot. She gave him a weak smile as she accepted the mug.

Jayden took a deep breath. “They had carved out a wall in the cell. Maybe not carved, but formed, somehow… there were spikes. Like big icicles, but on the wall instead of from above. They strapped me to it so that the spikes… stuck into my back… and drained my magic.”

She seemed so small. She was neither a child nor an adult, but wavered between the two. Vulnerable one moment, confident the next. The more he found out about her, the more his rage grew. Damn Riordan for throwing this girl into a torturous prison, her only crime being that she was a mage.

“That’s awful,” Rohan said. “A device to strip mages of their power…”

“Jayden. I am very sorry that all of this happened to you,” Jarrett said. “We are doing our best to stop Riordan.”

It dawned on Jarrett suddenly that she was someone’s daughter. She had come from somewhere before all this happened. He almost asked her if she had family before he remembered that she was a mage. If she had been carted off to the capital for her supposed crimes, it was unlikely that she would be able to return to any family she’d had.

“I want to help,” she said. She clutched her teacup, her knuckles white. “But I… I need to sleep now, if that’s okay.”

“Yes, of course. Please, rest,” Rohan said. “And, you are helping. Really. Learning anything we can about this magus stone is of utmost importance. If you can think of anything else, please let us know.”

Jayden nodded. “I will.” She set her teacup down and retired to Jarrett’s room.

“More information than we’ve been able to come up with in weeks, just dropped onto our lap,” Rohan commented when she was gone.

“It’s lucky. Maybe too lucky.”

“They’re kids. We should be able to trust them, shouldn’t we?”

“Trust?” Jarrett shook his head. “They might be young, but we can’t afford to trust anyone. Not anymore.”