Stone Sacrifice ✔️Chronicles of Grey BOOK ONE [COMPLETED]

Chapter Eight

     It had been a long time since I've seen all the marks on my skin. My life consisted of me leaping from one set of clothing to the next as fast as possible on the off change that someone walked in on me. With Arion outside the door, there was an even larger risk of that then usual. However, I was left with no choice, so I jammed the door closed and hid behind the bathing screen with the mirror for extra protection and sat awkwardly with the jar of cream in one hand and the other stretched in the most strangest ways to reach every inch of my back.

My palms and my neck was fine, but my back and ankles were bitten in several places so I would need to cover every bit of it. Luckily there was no blood - the bites were tiny, the injections nearly invisible - so rubbing the cream in was my only challenge.

But it had been so long since I'd seen my back. Not since Jovian sat down for my lessons with a mirror, lifting up the back of my shirt and whispering what each swirl meant and the way the magic flowed through it. The mark had grown since I'd last seen it, with more red blades bursting from the dragons mouth then there had been before and more silver lines in the swirls that went down just under my rib. It looked like it was about to swirl around my waist if it went any further, and I wondered what it meant. I would have to sit down with another lesson with Jovian when I returned to him.

When every bit of it was finally covered, I double checked everything, rechecking my ankles and feet, then doing my hands and neck again just in case I passed out from the feeling as I had last time and someone decided to strip me down or something.

I stood in the mirror for one moment though, looking at my markless body. I looked... strange. Though I rarely saw myself bare - with the marks or without - I looked incomplete somehow, as if those marks were limbs that were natural to my body. I supposed they were.

The banging on the door had me jumping and huddling, marks visible or not.

"You dead in there?"

"I'm coming." I snapped at him and yanked the robe over my head that Mokura allowed me to borrow so that I could have the eggs extracted without showing anything embarrassing.

"What took you so long?" He grumbled when I exited.

I rolled my eyes. "Do you have any idea how many layers I had on?" I lied and walked ahead of him into the main room.

Mokura's home was exactly what you would expect a home in a swamp lived in by a witch would look - eerie and dank. The reasons witches were hated while mages were revered was because of a single, simple reason and that was that mages used power stored within themselves, while witches stole it from around them, forcing it from the energy inside anything from plants to people, ofttimes creating something that should not be handled at all. Witches could give curses through a single drink of seemingly harmless water, and could see pieces of your future from stealing your blood. They could also gift blessings of protection and give items that will help guard you, but it was a rare few who trusted witches to gift it.

"Ah, there you are." Said Mokura, glancing up from Jazera's back with a finger up, holding a tiny piece of what looked like sand while the other held a thin reed. The reed was still pressed inside a tiny wound, a single drop of blood dripped onto the creaking floor where there were a few others already painted there. "I'm almost done this ones."

"Just hurry it up." Jaz grumbled, holding her cloak to her chest. She was not pleased. Aitch stood next to her, holding a plate of several reeds and a small jar. Mokura put the egg in the jar and went back to work.

While Arion went to kneel in front of Jaz, gripping her fingers and looking worried, I studied the witch.

Mokura was not the same witch as the one that had helped me. Last I'd been here, Mokura had been a little girl, colouring a picture on the table that had held a thousand jars. But like all witches, she had aged quickly in looks due to the power she forced from around her, and she looked to be in her late fifties, though she was younger then I. Her mother had looked to be in her nineties when I'd come, but was probably only thirty or so. This witch would not live much longer at all, but she did not have an apprentice child with her. She must feel quite alone.