The Dreamfarer

22

"I believe you are familiar with our visitor, Maeve," Kroma taunted, that stupid, snide smile taking up the bottom half of his face. 

Mae did not spare him a glance. As formidable of an opponent she had no doubt Kroma was, she was not willing to take her eyes off of her father. Dael was the more powerful of the two, and it was him that she feared the most. 

When she failed to respond, Kroma spoke again. "Manners, Maeve; you should greet our guest--"

"Enough, Kroma." 

Dael was holding up a single hand, and the effect was immediate. Kroma fell silent, and Mae held back a smirk; the leader was nothing more than a docile puppy in Dael's presence. It made her feel good to see Kroma acting weak, but it just intensified her apprehension about what her father was doing here.

Dael stepped into the center of the room, where the light from along the edges was much more successful in illuminating his figure. Mae did not step back; she knew that it would be no use. She wondered if there were spells to make the walls impervious to sound as well, or if Folco would hear her if she started to scream. However, Kroma had probably played his game well. After all, he had brought Dael here somehow - for some reason - without anyone noticing. He probably had Folco dragged back to his tent when he refused to go on his own to wait for Mae's reappearance so that he was out of the way. Mae wondered if she would have a reappearance at all.

"My child," her father began, and she had to literally bite her tongue to hold back an irate retort. "I have been searching for you ever since those warlocks kidnapped you from me. I heard how you were attacked shortly after they took you; I would kill that man myself if he was not already dead.

"Surely you realize that you do not belong here, Maeve. Leave with me now. I am your family, my child. Here, you are surrounded by evil, by people that would all like to hurt you or use you as a piece in their little games and experiments. I will never hurt you, Maeve. Come with me."

Mae snorted. It may not have been the best idea, but she didn't really care. "So are you two all buddy-buddy now?" she wondered out loud, trying to stall for time rather than respond to her father's words. "I mean, you told me what Kroma did to you in the past, Dael. Did you forgive him so easily?"

Dael scowled and cast a glare at Kroma, an action that had the leader shrinking in on himself, as if he was trying to hide in plain sight.

"I told Kroma that no harm would come to him as long as he handed you over," explained Dael.

Now Mae peered at Kroma. She had to pit these two against each other more; it was her best chance to delay the inevitable until she could think of a way to escape. 

"You just let a Wayfarer wander right into your camp and tell you what to do, Lord Kroma?" she demanded, making her tone incredulous. "Oh, my... if the other warlocks hear about this..."

Kroma flushed angrily. "The other warlocks know nothing! And Dael is not telling me what to do, he gave me a deal! He told me that in return for you, he would help me become a Wayfarer!"

Mae froze with her mouth open. That was not what she had expected to hear. She knew that a Wayfarer was a warlock that had turned its back on the rest of its kind, that pursued the dark arts to a degree that even the rest of their race would never dare to do. Due to this, it made Wayfarers more powerful, but also much more corrupt. They lost any sense of humanity they ever had; they were nothing but evil, filled to the brim with their own personal demons that they called forth in order to commit their sinful crimes. 

As she thought about all of this, it suddenly made sense to her. Of course Kroma would want to be a Wayfarer. Everything that she had discovered on her own about the man, and everything that Folco had told her, illustrated one thing, one desire that Kroma had always placed above everything and anything else in his miserable life: power.