Wildfire-Prologue

Wildfire

14 Years Earlier

The storm had been brewing for fourteen days now, and Sybil was starting to get restless. The forecaster had advised everyone to stay inside until the storm blew over, which had been twelve days ago. Twelve days of cabin fever.
     She stuck her head out of her window to look at the sky above. The clouds were darker than they were before. When she had last checked, the heavens were ashy gray, instead of onyx black.
     Thunder rumbled in the distance, and she drew her head back inside of her apartment. Sybil ran her fingers through her graying hair and stole a glance at her wristwatch. It was only six-o-clock. She released a sigh of relief that Sybil didn't know she was holding. Not late. Not seven yet. Still safe.
     Sybil jerked out of her stupor. Silly, she thought. You still have work to do. She walked cautiously to the cabinet behind her. It was adorned with countless photographs of a laughing young woman with beautiful blonde hair and hazel eyes. One picture displayed her with a man, about the same age as her, only with dark brown hair and striking green eyes. 'Beloved' was engraved on the silver frame. Sybil sighed and traced a loving finger around the couple. Still safe, she repeated in her mind. Em and Henry are still safe. My son is safe.
     She pulled open a drawer that was below the photographs, revealing a long, thin knife, about sixteen inches long, sitting next to a leather sheath. The blade was carved with strange designs that wouldn't have made sense to an unsuspecting Ordinary, but they made sense to Sybil. Truth, Strength, Love, Compassion... the markings seemed to glow in the dim haze of her apartment. Sybil grabbed the dagger from the drawer, slid it into the leather scabbard, and stuck it into her belt. Who knew if she might need to use it.
Got the Ceremonial. Now for the last part. She began to climb the stairs to the study. Each step made the floorboards creak so loudly it made Sybil nervous.
At the top, there were three doors. Sybil pushed open the door to the right, the one that sported peeling paint and rotting wood. The room looked like it hadn't been disturbed in decades. Though it wasn't spacious, the lack of light and décor made it feel as if it was. The curtains were pulled tight over the windows, filtering any light inside to gray. A thick layer of dust covered every surface, which wasn't much, except for a floor-to-ceiling mirror.
     The mirror was the most unusual of the room. It was large and ornate, with a gleaming bronze-gold frame surrounding it. No traces of dust were on the surface at all. The mirror itself seemed to be out of place, as if it was from another era but decided to stay in this apartment. There was something special about that mirror, and Sybil knew it.
     Her footsteps made little clouds of dust swirl around her feet as she approached the mirror, stopping a foot away from the shimmering surface. Sybil looked at her watch. 6:19. It would have to be good enough.
She unsheathed the knife, sending it in a gleaming arc, landing on a small star-shaped scratch on the center of the frame, where it stuck, quivering slightly. A small gust of wind blew into the cramped room, making the curtains rustle. The stairs gave a worn groan.
     Sybil closed her eyes with a small smile.

     Finally.

     "I hope you're not staying long. I have a very busy schedule to attend to." She said aloud.
     The man in the doorway froze in mid-step, but didn't show any sign of surprise.
     "You know what I'm here for." He growled.
     Sybil opened her eyes and turned to face the man. He was very tall, his black shaggy hair brushing the top of the doorframe. He looked very tired. His charcoal eyes had circles beneath them, and a day-old stubble was beginning to form. Still, his dark eyes seemed alert, focusing on Sybil's slight figure.
     "Where is she?" He said, his raspy voice matching his ragged appearance.
     "I don't know what you're talking about." Sybil said in a light sing-song tone.
     "Oh, really?" The man pulls something out of his black leather jacket. A short knife, with a glittering obsidian blade encrusted with golden designs like Sybil's, except that these read Power, Destruction, and Pride. "You'd better start thinking real hard. Grim doesn't like to be kept waiting."
     Sybil eyed Grim apprehensively, weighing her options. She glanced at her watch again, 6:47, and groaned inwardly. She was going to have to stall.
     "How'd you get in, Lee?" Sybil said. "The door was Warded."
     Lee smirked. "Can't tell you even if I knew, Syb. Some of the Magi have found some spells so old and powerful that even your family would never have heard of." He smirks and turns Grim in his hands, letting it catch the murky light. "No. I take that back. These spells are so powerful that you wouldn't have the guts to try."
     Sybil's cheeks flared. "Some power is best kept alone. You should know that better than anyone else, Lee Thomas."
     Now it's Lee's turn to turn red. "My allegiance is to the Storm, not to my family. I gave up on them ever since they exiled my brother."
     "For good reason! Jack was trying to raise the dead, for Elle's sake! Don't you understand how wrong that is?"
     "I know that a family should love each other no matter what!" Lee is shouting now, and he points Grim towards Sybil. "I'm just wasting my time with you. Perhaps she's in another safe house. No matter. Soon enough Henry and Emelia will join you in the afterlife."
He raises his knife into the air, ready to throw, and Sybil whipped around and wrenched her Ceremonial free from the mirror frame. But she was too late. Before she could raise the dagger to defend herself, Grim leaves Lee's hand and starts spinning toward her, end over end. Sybil turns her head away and closes her eyes, but all she hears is a dull metal clang. She opens her eyes again.
     A man, not Lee, was standing with his back to her, a giant iron shield blocking him and Sybil from any more attacks by Lee.
     "Henry?" Sybil gasps, her voice quavering slightly, "Is it  you?"
     The man turned, and his face shines at the sight of her. His tousled brown hair and green eyes...
It was the man from the photograph. It's Henry.
     Henry's eyes shimmered with happiness. "Hi, mom. Hope I'm not late."
     Sybil showed her watch face to him. Precisely seven-o-clock.
     "Right on time, as usual." She said, smiling.
     "Enough of this family reunion!" Lee shouted, pulling out a miniature crossbow, "I'll kill you both myself if I have to!" He fired a bolt, but it buried itself into Henry's shield. The shield made a metallic grinding sound and glowed red-hot. Henry throws it aside.
     "Acid." He spits.
     He pulls his sword out of his scabbard. It's a huge sword, with a crystal blade, uncommon nowadays. Henry swings the unusual blade toward Lee's face, but he ducks and fires a bolt at Sybil with his crossbow. She slices it out of the air with her dagger, silently thanking the maker of the Ceremonial that they had decided to make it acid-proof. The mirror shimmered behind her, and an indistinct outline of a person appeared inside the frame, though no one payed it any attention.
     Henry and Lee were still battling to the death. Henry still continued to swing his massive sword, while Lee dodged between the blows, occasionally firing an acid-packed bolt from his crossbow. They all missed, burying themselves into the old wooden floorboards with slight sizzling sounds. They were evenly matched.
     But Henry's swings were getting slower. The crystal sword drooped lower and lower to the ground in every step, and Lee saw his chance. He raised the crossbow, loaded with the last of his ammunition, and fired. At the same time, the mirror glowed bright, blinding white.
     The bolt from the crossbow sped its way toward Henry's chest, Sybil screaming at her son to move, do something.
     She didn't need to.
A single silver arrow whipped past her ear, piercing the bolt and pinning it to the door. Sybil turned around to see a short young woman standing in front of the mirror, the blinding light now fading. Her bow was raised and a silver-tipped arrow was pointing itself at Lee.
     "Move one muscle and you won't see the light of day again." She growled. Even though she was small, her fierce expression made her dominate the room. Her long blonde hair framed her face in a shining curtain, and her brown-green eyes were narrowed in distaste. Immediately, Sybil knew it was Em, Henry's wife, and her daughter-in-law.
     Henry shook himself out of his daze and pointing his sword at Lee's chest. "Thank you, sweetie. That was almost too close."
     Em rolled her eyes, smiling slightly. "I shouldn't have to save you, hon. That's the whole point of going solo."
     "Enough, you two." Sybil cut in, "We need to figure out what to do with this fool."
     Lee smirked. "Letting me go would be fantastic."
     Em's grip on her bow tightened. "Not a chance."
     "I suggest we bring him to the Court. Let them deal with this traitor." Henry growled.
     "No." Sybil said. "New info says that the Court could be infiltrated. We can't take any chances. I say we take him out, here and now."
     "Are you crazy, mom?! The Storm will be on us in seconds!" Henry cried. "Not to mention that the Court will have our heads for executing without consulting them!"
     "We'll be cutting off a key member of the Storm! Don't you want that?"
Em finally joined in on the conversation. "Of course we do! But executing Lee wouldn't be logical. We can force him to spill all of the Storm's secrets. If he's as important as you think, then he could be a gold mine for information!"
     Sybil raised her hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. How will we get him to talk without violating any Court laws?"
     Em smiled. "Leave that to me." She looks over at Lee, and carefully, slowly, slings her bow over her shoulder so she was empty-handed. "You know who I am and what I can do. I'm what you came here for, correct?"
Lee smiled dryly. "That's right. You and the... package."
Em's upper lip curled. "Why?"
     "You know why. It would be...beneficial...for my master to have access to such a powerful force."
Em stretched a finger out toward Lee. "Speaking of, where is your master? We haven't talked in a long time." She stroked Lee's cheek with a single thin finger. Henry tensed, his hands clenching into fists.
     "I thought we agreed that you would stop doing that, Em." He said. "You know what the Court does to Magik-users." Em looks over at him.
     "No one has to know about it. Besides, if it makes him talk, then I'll take the risk."
     She turns back to Lee, who hadn't moved an inch.
     "Now. Where is your master?"
Lee shuddered under Em's touch, the first sign of weakness he'd shown since he'd been surrounded.
     "I... I don't know." He stammers, his dark eyes darting back and forth. A bead of sweat trickles down his temple. He's scared, Sybil mused. Whatever Em's doing to him is working.
     "Come now." Em lifts Lee's head toward her face. "You're one of the Storm's strike team. Of course you know where he is." She smiles sweetly.
     Lee is struggling against invisible bonds keeping him from moving. His breaths were coming in short rasps.
"I don't know where he is," he breathes, "but I know where my teammates are."
     Em beams. "Great! Where?"
     Lee smirks. "Behind you."
     Sybil turns around just in time to see her son's chest impaled by an insanely grinning man with Grim.
     The world goes silent in Sybil's mind as she screamed an unearthly, guttural cry, because that's not Henry, he can't be, it's not him falling to the floor, it's not...
     Her only son...
     A silver arrow buries itself in the grinning man's neck, and he slides to the floor, twitching wildly.
     "Henry!" Em screams as she rushes over to him, leaving Lee to collapse on the ground shuddering, a flower of blood blossoming at his torso, though Sybil had not seen Em pull a weapon. An iron throwing knife appeared out of nowhere, grazing past Em, creating a shallow line of red across her forehead. She cries out and turns toward the doorway that the knife had come from. Three men and one woman stood there, faces hidden in the shadow of the hallway, the lady holding a stack of thin throwing knives. Em shoots an arrow at her, but the man next to the shadow woman sliced it out of the air with his broadsword. After a moment of hesitation, Em runs to Henry's side, shouting, "Cover me!" to Sybil, who had been frozen in place.
     Sybil blinked, then said, "Right!" and pulled out her dagger. Four against one? She thought to herself as she dodged another throwing knife. That's not a very fair fight. One of the men who towered above his companions rushed toward her, brandishing a golden axe. He swung, and Sybil easily sidestepped him, reached in, and hacked off the axe at the handle with a swipe. As the man gaped in surprise, staring at the once-whole axe, Sybil punched him in the face, hard. His knees crumpled, head hitting the floorboards with a dull crack. Sybil smiled to herself. Not a very fair fight for them, she corrected herself.
     The other two men stepped forward, cautiously.
"Scared, boys? Afraid you'll end up like your friend here?" Sybil jeered.
     The shorter of the two men barked a laugh. "You really believe we're scared, doll?" He pulls his sword out of his scabbard. The blade is crusted with rust-colored flakes Sybil hoped was just rust.
     "I suppose you'll have to find out." Sybil snarled, brandishing her knife. The man smirked, and darted forward, surprisingly swift for a man his size. Sybil barely had a chance to raise her weapon when they connected, metal grinding against metal. He wrenched his sword away in a grunt, then came around again with a thrust that would have skewered Sybil had it not been for Em. He pulled his arm away, howling, an arrow poking out between his fingers. Em ran toward him, pulling out a small dagger as she went. The man's eyes widened, his arm momentarily forgotten. He made a small squeaking sound in the back of his throat as Em drove the knife into his stomach. Sybil looked into Em's face and saw that she was crying, her tears streaming down her face. "That was for Henry, you filthy worm." She whispered, wrenching her knife out of the man's body. His face lit up in a cruel grin, and it was still plastered upon his face as he fell to the floor, dead.
Sybil and Em faced the remaining two members of Lee's team, still cloaked in the shadowy doorway. The woman grinned, and passed a small object to her companion. Em shot an arrow at her face, and Sybil thought that the woman stood no chance, but in a flash, the woman caught the arrow. She smirked, and with a swish of her cloak, she disappeared into the shadows.
     The final attacker stepped forward. He held up the item that the woman had given to him. It was a small black-glass bottle, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, with a cork stopper. He smirks at the two women.
     "You've fought bravely." He says, a rasp biting his voice. "But I'm afraid your battle is futile. The Storm has already won."
     The bottle smashes to the floor, and fire springs out of nowhere, licking eagerly at the old, dry wood of the apartment. The perfect kindling.
     "No!" Em screams, shooting an arrow toward him, but he was already gone, a dark shadow slipping through the wall of flame.
     "What are we going to do?! This place is going to collapse in seconds!" Sybil cried, sheathing her knife. The fire was spreading fast, running rapidly up the ceiling, causing the structure to groan.
     "We're going to get out of here, that's what!" Em shouted. A bookcase to the side of her toppled over, crumbling to ash.
     Sybil looked around. The smoke made it hard for her to see. The bodies of the team and Henry littered the ground. Sybil's eyes focused on Henry's body. Just a few minutes ago, he was saving her from a routine attacker. And now... "What are we going to do about them? We can't just leave them."
     Em was staring at Henry's body, too. "There's nothing we can do." She said, tears welling in her eyes, and turned toward the door, tearing her eyes away from her husband. Her foot was raised when the floor collapsed.
Sybil felt as if she was falling from space as she crashed through the floors of her home, landing flat on her back, coughing. All she was aware of was black sky and the distant wail of a siren. She rolled over, and groaned. The flare of pain in her ribs and leg suggested they were broken.
     "Em?" She croaked, her voice smothered with ash. She cleared her throat and forced out, "Em! Where are you?!"
     A beam of wood shifted, and a female voice cried out in agony. Sybil stood up quickly, her left hand flying to her ribs, the other to her knife. Balancing precariously on her good leg, she limped over to the source, taking care not to step on any glass. A plume of smoke shifted in the wind, revealing a gruesome sight.
     Em's lower half of her body was trapped under a massive slab of brick and wood, the golden mirror lying beside it, not a scratch on it. Her face was facing up, deathly pale and eyes closed. Her once-beautiful blonde hair was fanned around her in tangles and soot. A wide puddle of blood was smeared around her broken body. Too much blood, Sybil thought emptily. Too much around her, not enough in her. She limped cautiously toward Em.
     Em's head turned slowly toward Sybil's uneven footsteps. Her eyes opened, but she smiled sadly. "I always thought I would go down in battle." She whispered.
     Sybil stared at her. "What?"
"This war... It needs to be stopped." Em continued, oblivious to Sybil's questions.
"You know it is prophesied that..." Sybil continued, but Em interrupted her, "That a girl raised in the Ordinary realm will end it all? Yes, I have heard the rumors." Em's face twists in pain suddenly, and she cries out. Sybil rushes to her side, but Em raises a hand.
     "No," she says faintly, "I don't need help. I'm gone anyways." Her eyes are still squeezed shut, but she relaxes under the mound of rubble.
     "I believe I know who the prophecy is about. The Storm does too." Em whispers, so low that Sybil has to lean in to hear.
     "Who?"
     "The package."
     Em waves a hand weakly, and a bundle of blankets appear in Sybil's arms. Sybil starts. "The Court will arrest you for sure."
     Em snorted, though it sounded like a small gasp of pain. "What are they going to do? Kill me? Besides, I don't really care what happens to me, as long as my daughter is safe." She gestures to the bundle, and Sybil peered into the folds. A baby lay nestled inside the blankets, barely even six months old, sleeping soundly. Sybil's face lights up. "My...?" She asks, and Em laughed weakly. "Your granddaughter is the package," She says, grinning, "and the one who is said to save us from the Storm."
     Sybil stared at the child in her arms. "Her name?" she whispered. "Henry and I named her..." Em coughed, and a splatter of blood formed at her mouth and nose. She sighed, and seemed to deflate slightly. "I don't have any time left. Listen to me, Syb." She pulls Sybil close. "I don't care that she is said to save the Mirror world. That world is too unstable as it is." She says bitterly. "I need... one favor of you."
     "Anything," Sybil blurted, "Anything at all!"
Em grimaced. "Do not let her into the Mirror World. It is the only thing that will keep her safe from that prophecy."
Sybil stared at her. "But why?!" She cried, "If she is the one of the prophecy, then she is the only one who can save the world!"
     "My daughter should not need to risk her life for them! They can have someone else's child save the world," Em said, "but it won't be her."
     Thunder rumbled in the distance. Sybil blinked once, then sighed. "So be it." She raised her face to the stormy heavens. "I swear upon the Court and the River Lyn that I will do everything in my power to keep my granddaughter in the Ordinary Realm." She says, quietly but firmly.
     Em smiled in relief, "Thank you, Syb." and closed her eyes.
     "Em?" Sybil whispered, shaking her slightly. "What is the baby's name?" Em's head lolled from side to side, but she did not wake. "EM!" Sybil shouts, "Em please, no..."
     A drop of rain plopped onto Em's face. The storm had finally broken. Sybil did not run for shelter. She only positioned herself to protect her granddaughter.
Sybil looked into Em's once-smiling face. "I will name her Keara." She whispered to her, even though Sybil knew Em wouldn't hear her. "Kee Morrow, because she would have been the key to saving the Mirror World." Sybil knew that it might be a small bit of defiance to her oath, but she did not care. If little Kee was destined to help millions of people, then breaking an oath would have to be the price.
     Anyone who saw her that day would remember her as the woman who sat in the ruins of her home, watching over a dead woman and her grandchild as the biggest storm of the decade poured over her.