Book of Fates ✔

Good night

The daitias and Anya were sitting around the fireplace, eating the carrot pie, and studying the map. Everyone was obsessed with their new discovery. Everyone but Anya. She couldn't put her father's phone call out of her mind. She had to lie to him, and she felt terrible about it.

"Why are we wasting our time?" Daphne kept talking next to Anya, holding the silvery paper. "It is obviously a plan of some crippled city. If we compare the chart with the satellite map, we'll easily get the location we need."

Not that Anya had never lied to her dad before—she had, but about the innocent things like eating too much sweets or spending the night at the friend's house instead of going to the concert. Who hadn't done that, right? But about leaving on a journey with aliens? Never.

"Have you ever seen such a city, Daph?" Nikk was shaking his head in firm negation, not for the first time. "Even if there was one, it's been wiped off the face of the earth thousands of years ago."

And, the part of her lying Anya felt the worst about was that she actually loved this lie. She loved the sense of being involved in some significant business of the daitias, the sense of possessing the power to win some invisible war with the fomoires, to make something right...

"Looks like a location in a video game to me," Eirney snickered and took a picture of the chart with his tablet.

The conversation buzzing in Anya's ears wouldn't let her think of her problematic lie, but she couldn't help listening also.

"Why do think this paper is something important at all?" she asked, looking at the exited faces of the daitias.

"Do you see these?" Amarillis pointed at one of the patterns curling alone the edge of the document.

Anya shrugged, "Pretty tracery."

"It's not a tracery, it's a language. Our language." Rill narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "The one that the people of Da'Ariya used to speak many years ago. Today you can only find it in ancient scrolls of legends. The fact that the paper written in our language appears to be on Earth raises lots of questions."

"That's what you've been looking for?"

"No, it shows the way to what we've been looking for," Nikk said. He looked at his friends and continued as he saw no objections in their faces. "On Earth, there is a book called Niyati... The Book of Fates. That's what we need to win the war."

Anya shifted her incredulous eyes to Nikk. "A book can help you win the war?"

Daphne nodded. "There is a chance."

Suddenly, something metallic hit the floor behind their backs. The daitias tensed and turned their heads in alarm. On the edge of her vision, Anya saw as Daphne's hand slipped into her purse, but before she brought whatever there was out, her eyes found the source of the noise, and she relaxed.

It was an empty coffee jar that rolled off the kitchen table, clattered across the uneven floor and knocked against the threshold. The wind was the one to blame probably. It was howling furiously through the cracks of the window frames. Anya shivered and pulled the woolen blanket tighter around her.

"We won't figure it out on our own," Eirney stood up, brushing the pie crumbs off his knees. "We need to ask someone in Kelas."

"I'll go with you," Rill volunteered and instantly leaped to her feet. "You'll talk too much if you go alone."

Daphne's thin eyebrows shot up in protest. "And what are we supposed to do while you're away?"

"Wait here, we'll be back by the sunrise," Rill said.