I awoke wrenching up water onto a bed of solid ice. The water was just as freezing coming back up as it was going down. My bare skin was soon covered with a blanket made of wolf hide. A very familiar one. I gazed up to see who had put it there, and I saw the best sight I had seen in a long time. Those golden rings encased an aquamarine sea, entrancing me once again as they had done countless times before. How? I thought. I saw her turn to ash in my hands along with everything else. It's not possible. Is this the afterlife? My mind raced through the possibilities, searching for an answer. She swept her hand through her hair that cascaded down her shoulder, throwing it behind her, then brought the hand down to touch my face. Where before, all who touched me recoiled in pain from the heat on my skin, she seemed to be unfazed. As steam erupted from me in a pillar, I felt my bones finish mending beneath my flesh, sealing with a visceral snap. As the pain faded, so did the cloud of steam. Her hand rested below my chin, roughly scrubbing against my stubble. Her hand was silky smooth and comforting, yet strong and worn at the same time. "Are... are we dead?" I whispered, still shivering. She brought me into a tight embrace. "Not yet" she responded. "But you sure tried", she laughed through tears. She begins to lead me off the ice, holding my left arm over her shoulder and grabbing hold of my wrist, her right arm around my midsection. Each step the ice seemed to get colder, stinging my bare feet. Eventually we found our way to the shore of the lake, a lean-to tent and pile of firewood lay beneath a towering pine. She sat me down on a crimson bedroll underneath the tent, then went to start the fire, sparking flint and steel into the straw beneath the sticks. It must've been too damp to light because no sparks would catch. "Pass me some tinder" I said weakly, wrapping the wolf skin around my waist to cover myself. As my pants had apparently been scorched away in the blast. She grabbed some strips of wood and laid them in my palm, not long after they began smoking and eventually caught flame. I laid them on the ground and piled the rest on top, the flames growing to envelop the rest of the wood. She sat next to me under the tent as the snow started to fall slowly, the crackling of the fire broke the silence of the forest around us. "So, not that I mind, I'm glad even but, I saw you turn to ash. How are you alive?" In response she pulled up her sleeves, again revealing her runic marks. This time though, they glowed with a golden hue, leaving traces of light in the air as her arms moved around. She took a deep breath and held it for a second before saying "You aren't the only one with abilities here. All these years you've been trapped, I've been practicing the arcane arts. What you saw was a powerful protective ward that took a year to inscribe." I stared with a curious look, only some of her words made sense to me. Arcane arts? Ward? I'd heard of some towns mages practicing some kind of magic but these were mainly old decrepit hermits mixing herbs in a bowl and chanting a few words in the old language. But real magic was something no one alive in our village had ever seen. Only heard of in legend. Sensing my confusion she began to explain, "These marks I have are like yours, but... different. Where both are conduits for arcane energy, yours seem to be pure energy. Fire magic is the most potent there is, drawing directly from the burning circles. Where mine is actually a runic lexicon. Each symbol here is a rune or magic marking. I can draw on their power to influence the weave and cast spells. Make sense?" "It's a lot to take in." I responded. Looking at my marred hands and arms. Knowing I drew energy directly from the hells only cemented my vision of myself as a devil rather than human. "Especially after what just happened. Because of me everything we ever knew is gone. Our... our families are gone because I couldn't control it" I said as tears began to stream down my face. Suddenly I felt her shaking me by the shoulders. "Kaine, they're not dead!" She yelled, "Remember how I said they took both of our parents? They took them out of the city weeks ago." My breath caught in my chest, feeling as if a blade was being removed, a weight dropped off. And a single tear rolled down, one of joy for the first time in years. She handed me a pouch of jerky and bread. "Eat up, you'll need the strength soon. Tomorrow we're heading to Anchoraad." "The port town?" I asked, "what's there?" "You'll see. We need to sleep though. And you're using my blanket as a loincloth, great." She said with a smirk. She rolled up her sleeves again, the white glow present in all but a few of the runes, a circle of symbols and an arrow atop her forearms. Those glowed a deep blue as she waved her fingers in the air, threads streamed from her fingertips and weaved themselves into a blanket in the air, hanging in suspension until it was complete. She grabbed it from the air and wrapped it around herself. I moved off the bedroll and gestured for her to lay there instead, sitting myself on the ground. "What are you doing? I brought that for you" she told me. "Trust me" I said, "after the cell I was in, this feels like laying on a cloud" So I lay there, smelling the fresh scent of pine needles and fresh snow, the sound of the fire still crackling beside us, until I drifted off into dreamless sleep. When I awoke in the morning I felt a weight on my chest. Aloura had apparently turned during the night, her head resting on me and her feet pointed towards the pile of soot that was the fire. My stirring must have woken her because she leaned up slightly, then quickly jerked up into a sitting position. "Sorry, the fire went out and you were just really warm" her face turning slightly red. "Don't worry about it. But if we're going into town I could use something other than this" I replied, tugging at the wolf skin. "Can you make clothes with that magic of yours?" Raising her hands she said, "I can try. Hold still" again the same runes lit up with a deep blue, shining beneath her sleeves. Threads flowed from her fingertips and wrapped around me, forming a light tan tunic and pants, with leather boots and white arm wraps to finish off. "For the burns" she said. The wolf skin was still wrapped around my waist but splayed open at the front so I could move better. I brushed snow from its soft fur and my new clothes. They were quite comfortable. I was packing up the tent when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see Aloura holding her hands behind her back. "I've got a surprise" she said with a smile. I raised an eyebrow in question and she brought her hands around front. She held a item very dear to me. It's supple leather sat against my hip many a hunt, it's handle was molded to my palm from years of use, the brass guard shone bright in the morning sun. "My knife!" I grabbed it and unsheathed the blade. The dark red handle sat familiarly in my hand. The spine, sweeping up from the hilt, dipping back down in the middle only to sweep back up and down again to the tip. And the blade swelling down forming the belly of the blade, cinching back down at the hilt. Years ago, when I turned 7, my father took me next door to the blacksmiths shop and we made the knife together with the smiths guidance. It was a beautiful blade. It had never broken nor chipped, and always seemed to be razor sharp. "Where did you find this?" I asked. "When you were taken, your father gave it to me saying 'Keep this safe. If I don't return make sure you get that to him'. He then went with your mother to the barracks and raised hell trying to find you. He took down about three guards himself before he was swarmed. Him and your mother were arrested right there." Father, I thought, I'm going to slit the throat of the man who cause all this. And then you and I will dance on his grave. I sheathed the knife before belting it to my left side, tucked under the wolf skin. Strapping the tent across my back, we headed east to Anchoraad, our feet crunching snow beneath us as we walked towards the rising sun.
