Evil has returned to the world. This there is no denying.
Three sisters, practical magic casters far from the great sorcerers of old, have set out with the completely realistic and attainable expectation of saving the known Realm. Fate sees them sum...
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Gia
The forest had grown thicker as the three women made their journey, but through the gaps in the branches of the towering trees, the sky had turned the colour of a bruise, pink and lilac. It was beneath this sky that Gia ran her hand along the face of a tree that showed its age in its well-gnarled trunk. The spirits should be strong here in the forest, Gia knew, and those that remained were saying something, something, something...
But what...?
Gia turned just as Roslin halted mid-step and craned her head upward in the last, dying light of the evening. So she felt it, too, then.
"What is it, sister?" Blodwyn asked Roslin. Her hood was drawn and her face shadowed—how she kept it more oft than not as of late.
Roslin shrugged her shoulders and pulled the hood of her own cloak back before answering, "Something just doesn't feel right." The middle sister tucked her hair behind her ears. "Words fail to do it justice, I fear."
"I feel it, too. We should keep moving," Blodwyn said, voice firm as she linked her arm through Roslin's. The pair fell in step with one another, their eyes landing again on Gia, who was crouched by the base of the oak tree as she listened to her younger sisters speak. Her palm was pressed flat against the bark as she tried one last, hopeless time to get a feel for whatever it was that had been through this forest—something so dark that even the spirits dare not say its name, if it had one at all.
Gia felt tears prick her eyes and stood before turning fully to face her sisters, her fingers lingering against the tree just a moment longer. "Something dark has been here...or is here. So dark is it that even the spirits shy from its presence. They've left this place." She fell in line on the other side of Blodwyn and said nothing further.
The name, though known by all three sisters, went unspoken.
They walked the pine straw-strewn path in silence, but the air itself grew stifling as they pressed further forward, the sky transforming to an almost unnatural inky black.
Blodwyn snapped her fingers. A sphere of magelight formed and hovered in front of them, guiding their way through the gnarled roots of the forest floor in the blackness of night. The shadows darkened and lengthened around them, like the claws of a monster unfurling and reaching for them.
It was Roslin who halted again, her green eyes wide and scanning the shadows as though sensing something the others did not. Blodwyn reached for the dagger forever worn at her side and Gia closed her eyes to focus on the sounds around her.
Not now, begged Gia inwardly. Whatever happens, please don't let it be now, not while we're so depleted.
A sudden woosh cut through the air that had been still and otherwise silent a moment before.
