Codex

8 - Our Demons Get Lonely

After a few minutes of sitting around a campfire and sipping on some tea, I understood the gist. Volt's parents visited a friend when he was about around eight so Pyro was still waiting to join the world. This friend of theirs had a daughter around Volt's age, sparks ignited and voila! Here we are!

Pyro was born soon after and the families visited each other often, however, on one of Volt's visits, there was an issue for them to return home the normal way and the desert was their next best bet. Sadly, for them, that was around the time mages began abandoning the place because their failed experiments adversely affected the lands. Kira and her missing family were amongst the first victims that resulted in having the desert coined 'Inferno Desert'.

As I revelled in the warmth of the tea and fire, they looked like they burned with a passion to embrace each other, only staving off their hunger because of my presence.

"You're a grown man. You can make whatever choices you want. Your fiancé asked me to protect you, not block you," I stated this. I could feel Donna squirm, probably unintentionally every time I looked at Kira.

She gives you that 'way-more-to-this-that-we-should-definitely-know' feeling, doesn't she? I sought Donna's advice and she wholly agreed.

"There's something so weird about her, yet, so familiar. Did you see how she walked through that wall? Abilities like that, like Kor'zha and the other spirit leaders are almost impossible to learn."

But somehow, some bandit out in the sticks, away from everyone knows such a high-level spell. Fishy, fishy, fishy.

"Do it." She decided.

Do it?

"Do it."

"I'ma do it."

I gulped the rest of my tea and set it down whilst they slowly, embarrassingly cozied up to each other. "Right, so uh, Volt," I caught his attention, "she's hiding something freakin' huge."

He tilted his head in puzzlement, then looked at her leaning on his arm. She sat up too, befuddled by my words.

"Cloning," I opened my hands in front of the campfire to further warm my wintry innards, "not that difficult of a spell, really, but still far beyond the capabilities of a hobbyist mage. In the Order's rank three, it's practically non-existent. In rank four, Officer, it's known, but by few. In rank five it's a little less uncommon."

"What are you saying, teach?" Volt asked me, straight out, with an awkward chuckle to ease the tense mood I was etching into the atmosphere.

I looked up at him, then looked at her and gave a toothless smile, which drew even more questions onto their faces. "What I'm saying, Volt," I emphasised, "is that, she is stupidly strong. I'm talking about levels way above the councilmen at the Order. A mage as strong as her, being backed by a bunch of no-name thugs in the middle of nowhere, doesn't that make you a little uneasy?"

She looked more worried than he did at this point. He took in all my points and these things began raising some flags for him. Her burnt-sienna hair was brushed back around her ear, "You have quite the eye," she said.

"Kira? Explain," Volt backed away a little.

"This," she said, a terribly long one, "might alarm you, but whatever rumours you might've heard are probably not true. Have you ever heard about the witch?"

I cackled out, a stupidly loud laugh, "That old children's story. Yeah. Witch of Ice and Fire, of Light and Shadow. She came from another world. And she has dragons at her command. What, don't tell me you're the witch?"