Chapter Three

I'm freaking exhausted by the time I make it out of the thick forest and into a field. The grass is green, and I welcome its wide-open air. Turning my eyes to the sky, I can see it's daytime, a bright, clear blue sky above my head, and I wonder if I walked all throughout the night without realizing.

God. No wonder I'm so tired.

I'm only two steps out of the forest when I hear a growl behind me. It's an almost unnatural sound, so low and menacing that I can practically feel it touching my skin. I take off in a sprint, ignoring how tired I am to get further away from whatever's in the woods, stalking me.

I have the feeling I won't like meeting it face to face. Something tells me it's not a normal animal.

After making it about thirty yards, I have to stop and catch my breath. I glance behind me and find that, whatever it is, it doesn't leave the forest. The ridiculously tall trees are a wall, separating the field from the dark, gloomy forest that stretches on behind them. It was so dark in that forest I didn't even realize it was daytime. That's how thick the tree canopy was.

As if sensing my need to collapse and sleep for hours on end, Rune says, "Shouldn't be too far now. I believe there's a settlement just past the hill over there."

The forest's edge abruptly stops, the field taking its place. A mile or so away sits a gentle hill. It's not very high, but it's high enough that I can't see past it from where I am. To remind me how hungry I am, my stomach growls.

If I would've known I'd be transported to God knows where, I would've eaten more ramen.

"So, do you have eyes or something? Can you see the hill?" I ask, resuming my walk. Breathing hard, I realize just how out of shape I am. It's a good thing that animal wasn't really hunting me, because if it was, I'd be food by now.

"Do I look as though I have eyes? Please." Now Rune sounds irritated, but if I have to guess, I'd say that's his normal state of being. "I can sense things. Anything that's around you. I may not be able to see out of your eyes, but I am aware of our surroundings all the same."

I don't get it, but I don't ask him any follow-up questions.

To the hill I go. There's no way around it, so I have to walk up it in order to see this so-called settlement Rune claims is close. Thankfully it's not a huge hill, and the incline isn't steep. By the time I reach the top, I'm not as out of breath as I was before.

My legs hurt, though. Like, my calves are killing me.

The moment I reach the top of the hill, I spot the settlement. Or village. Whatever. I don't give a shit what it's called; there are wooden houses and farming fields and everything. Less than fifty houses scattered in a small grid pattern, so not the largest village by any means. Still, hope rises within me. Maybe I won't have to make it to Laconia city after all; maybe someone here could get Rune off me.

Get Rune off me and help me get back home. That's not too much to ask, is it?

I keep walking, my goal singular: find someone to help me. I make it to the settlement's outskirts and pass beneath a stone archway that hangs over the dirt path leading through the village. I'm smiling, hope fresh and new inside me, but that smile dwindles and fades into a frown as an uneasy feeling washes over me.

I walk along the main dirt path. Besides my own footsteps, I don't hear anything. I don't see anything. I'm… alone? No way.

"Hello?" I ask, raising my voice to just under a shout. "Is anybody there? I need some help!"

Nothing answers me, and I slow to a halt when the dirt path widens into a circular, wide-open section smack-dab in the middle of the settlement. Empty stalls line the outskirts of the circle, and I have to assume it's some kind of marketplace.

"Rune," I talk to the annoying wizard on my wrist. "There's no one here. The village is empty." Even as I say it, I don't want it to be true. How could everyone be gone? How could there be no trace of them? People wouldn't just abandon their homes. It couldn't be some settlement-wide field trip. There's no way that's a thing.

"Hmm." He seems thoughtful. "It does appear as though everyone is simply… not here. I wonder how that could be?"

I should be surprised that the know-it-all on my wrist doesn't know the reason why this place is a ghost town, but the dread that built inside me while walking through it drowns out anything else I might feel.

"Something's wrong here," I mutter with a frown. "Something's very, very wrong."

The wind picks up, blowing my hair every which way. Even the air feels wrong. Worse than it did in the forest. I thought I was in the clear, but I was wrong. This isn't me being in the clear; this is worse. Much, much worse.

I whirl around, hoping that I'd blink and suddenly the village would come back to life—but nothing happens. Nothing changes. It's all the same.

Something in the street to my right catches my eye, though, and I'm drawn towards it, to whatever it is. Something blackened and small, leaning up against the side of the building. I have no idea what it is, not until I get closer.

No, it takes me until I'm standing directly in front of it to realize what it is.

Or who, I guess.

Skeletons. Two tiny skeletons huddled together, hugging each other. Not a lick of flesh on either of them, their bones charred and black. I'm not good at guessing kid's ages, but I'd say neither had hit puberty yet. The bigger one was maybe ten, and the smaller one… fuck, a toddler, maybe?

"What could've done this?" I ask Rune, wanting to be sick. Maybe it's a good thing my stomach is empty, otherwise I might throw up.

Those two kids… huddled together in their last moments… what did this? What could've killed them and blackened their bones while leaving the wooden structure behind them untouched? The house is not burned or charred at all.

Rune takes his time in answering me, his voice soft, "I don't know. Maybe this is what happened to the entire settlement."

I step away from the blackened bones of the children. "Are you saying you think everyone here is dead?" The last word doesn't want to come out. It's so… wrong. I might not know these people, they might be strangers to me, but how could I look at the scene before me and not feel my heart breaking? Whoever they were, they were only kids. They didn't deserve this.

"It is looking more and more likely, unfortunately," he whispers.

Pulling away from the skeletons of the children, I go to the nearest door. I knock out of habit, but the door isn't latched, so the action pushes it open a few inches. I step inside the house and look all around. A two-story abode, it smells of dust and forgotten things, but nothing more. No bodies in this one.

"It's like… they're just gone," I say.

"Maybe most were able to flee."

"Maybe," I say, but deep down it doesn't feel right. No one would leave their kids here to fend for themselves. Just because those two kids were the only skeletons I found so far doesn't mean there aren't others somewhere else. I don't really want to search every single house to find out.

I exit the house, not knowing what to do, when the silence of the village is broken by a strange sound. It's a sound I never heard before, so I can't place it, I can't say exactly what it is, but it's coming from the other side of the settlement.

Damn it. I have to go check it out. I don't want to, but I need to know what happened here. The curiosity is too strong, the situation too strange.

I follow the sound. Past a dozen houses, the sound grows louder. I don't know what could be making the sound, so once I reach the edge of the house nearest the sound, I hug the wall of it before peering around.

And when I see it, my stomach drops.

Bones. The sound I heard was bones, all black and charred like the two children's. And the thing that's making the bones clink against each other is… a dog? The dog is in the middle of what looks to be a massacre about twenty feet away, its back to me as it sniffs amongst the empty bones. Its hair is long and brown, a mutt if I have to guess.

I breathe out a sigh of relief and push away from the building. "I didn't know Laconia has dogs," I say.

Turns out, that's a mistake, because as soon as I say that, the dog whips its head in my direction—and in the process shows me that it isn't not a normal dog after all.

I'm frozen as I stare at this… this thing that should be a dog but is definitely not a dog. What makes it a dog? The body, the face, the snout. What makes it not a dog? The body, the face, and the snout.

Confusing? Yeah, I know.

At first glance, from the back, it looked like any mutt, but now that it's turned toward me, watching me with eyes a little too narrowed, I can see how disfigured it is. Its hair stops halfway down its stomach, revealing bones jutting out of its gut, a bloody, ugly mess. Its face is almost otherworldly; besides those eyes, there's something hideously wrong with it. The snout is too long, too jagged, and the teeth that are attached look like they're a few inches too big. So large they stick out even when the dog's mouth is closed.

"What the fuck is that?" I breathe out the question, slowly backing up as the disfigured dog approaches. "What the fuck is wrong with it?"

"I don't know, but it looks as though you've caught its attention. Running—"

I turn around and run as fast as I can away from the nightmare-inducing dog.

"—is not the best idea!" Rune finishes, but it's too late. I've already started to run, which means the dog lunges after me at a breakneck speed. The asshole should've said don't run instead, but I'm too frantic to get away from the twisted beast to yell at him for his poor way of wording his advice.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God." It's all I can repeat to myself, mostly because I don't want to die here, in this weird place, with this thing on my wrist, from that Resident Evil-looking dog.

"Rey, behind you!" Rune shouts, and I instinctively duck and crouch, as if curling into a ball will protect my important bits from this animal attack.

Now that he's caught up to me, the dog-like creature lunges, and I shut my eyes, not wanting to see those ugly teeth coming at me. I brace for pain, but nothing comes. Nothing at all comes. No teeth clamp down on my skin. The only thing that happens is a growl leaves the dog.

I peek my eyes open and find that a protective golden barrier surrounds me, shielding me from the dog's attack. "What the…" I can't even finish the question, too stunned to speak.

The barrier fizzles and cracks, as if made of living energy. Parts of it are white, so bright it almost hurts to look. Swirls and non-shapes, the barrier is powerful enough to stop the dog from attacking me.

Is this… magic? How? Why? I didn't—

"Don't just sit there," Rune instructs. "Do something!"

"Do something?" I echo, slowly standing to my feet as I face the dog—who's growling as it shakes itself off from the impact on the barrier. "How do I… I don't know how that happened!"

"We are connected, Rey. You have my magic at your disposal. Use it!"

The barrier is from Rune? Okay, that makes sense, but that doesn't answer my question of how the hell I use his power. It isn't like I know instinctively how to do this shit. I'm just a normal girl, failing at life. I don't do freaking magic.

"I don't know how," I say as the barrier around me fades—which the dog is quick to notice.

"It's inside you. It's a part of you now. We are one, Rey. Feel it," Rune guides me as the dog starts to circle me, as if trying to find the one place to attack where it won't trigger another barrier. "Feel the power from me ebbing into you."

Some super creepy words there, buddy, but now isn't the time to tell him that, so I say, "I don't know what any of that means!"

The dog has apparently decided I'm defenseless. It raises its hackles, bares its too-large of teeth, and leaps for me, going for my neck. I react instinctively by throwing up a hand toward the dog and flinching.

A whimper leaves the dog, and its abdomen, its stomach where all its bones stick out of its flesh in gruesome, unnatural ways, has a new addition. A bright yellow bolt of magic protrudes from its chest. It doesn't finish its lunge. The magic bolt in its stomach causes the dog to drop to the ground, dead.

I watch in horror as the hair and flesh on the dog's body turn to wispy ash, carried off by the wind. Within a few seconds, all that's left are its bones.

My arm is still outstretched, the tattoo on my hand and wrist glowing, tiny sparks dancing across my skin, as if reminding me that I did that. I did magic.

I can hardly breathe. What? What the hell just happened? What the fuck was that? Why did it look like that, and why the hell did it do that after it died? None of this makes sense. None of this makes any freaking sense.

And then my focus turns to my wrist as the mark on it stops glowing, returning to its black hue. "Holy shit," I whisper. "I did that? How did I do that? How the fuck did I do that?"

The mark lights up when Rune mutters, "Well, I wouldn't say it was just you. Without me, you would've been dead when the beast attacked. I threw up the barrier for you. You're welcome, by the way."

I laugh. This whole thing is insane. I feel like I'm going insane. "I did magic. I just did that. What the fuck is this? This has to be a dream. None of this is real. I'm just trapped in a coma or something—"

"I assure you, this is very real. All of this is happening. Denying it won't change anything; it will only put you—and therefore me—in danger. You can channel my magic, Rey, since we are connected. I can only do so much on my own, trapped like this."

Without a warning, I reach up and give myself a hard slap across the face. Hard enough to make me wince. Also hard enough to make Rune ask, "What was that about?"

"Had to make sure I'm not dreaming," I mutter. "That dog was a thing of nightmares. And magic? Magic isn't real."

Rune sighs. "We're on about this again? You saw what just happened. Magic is clearly real. Yes, that dog was a twisted version of itself, but that doesn't make it any less real. If I were you, I would avoid any creature that has been twisted by whatever magic has tainted this land."

"Magic," I whisper. My eyes land on the pile of bones the doglike creature was rummaging in before I stumbled upon it. "You think magic did this?"

"I think it's safe to say something happened here, and whatever it was, it wasn't quite natural. The dog was evidence enough of that. Regardless, you should find somewhere to rest. Laconia is quite the hike from here."

With everything I've seen here, it makes me wonder… "Are you sure Laconia is still a place? With people? What if it's like this? What if…" The question makes my stomach twist in the worst way. "…there's no one anywhere?"

"Whatever happened here was tragic, yes, but I highly doubt you are the only one left in the kingdom. There must be others."

I turn away from the pile of charred bones. "So you don't know what happened here?"

"No. Whatever this is, it must've happened after the empresses locked me away. I have no idea what could've done this, besides…" He quiets, as if he doesn't want to finish that sentence. Of course, he doesn't know me that well yet, because if he did, he'd know I won't let him trail off like that.

"Besides what?" I ask.

Rune is quiet for a while. It's hard to read a tattoo, but if I have to guess, I'd say he begrudgingly says, "Besides the empresses themselves. Until me, they were the only ones in the entire kingdom with power over the elements."

"Maybe it wasn't them. Maybe something else came," I offer, though I don't really know one way or another. Rune says the empresses did not appreciate the fact that he had magic, so they locked him away; maybe they were jealous or worried he'd try to usurp them or something?

Either way, just because Rune has it out for the empresses doesn't automatically mean I'll agree with him. Still… whatever did this to this village wasn't natural, and that means it could only have been magic. It doesn't bode well for these empress ladies, whoever they are. Or were.

Because who knows? Maybe they're dead, too.

I hope not, though. They might be my only hope of getting Rune off me and going back home.

I push into the nearest house and check it out. I am tired, but I'd be damned if I rest in a house with any skeletons in it. This one is a one-floor abode, so it's quick to check. One living room-slash-kitchen area, and two teeny, tiny bedrooms. I guess indoor plumbing isn't a thing here, which means if I have to go, I'll have to go outside.

Yippee.

I don't find any food, but I do find some water in a bowl, and I drink and drink until I can feel the water sloshing around in my stomach. It ain't food, but it's something. Better than nothing.

I choose the bedroom whose bed is comfiest, and then I lay down on my back and stare at the wooden ceiling. Even after almost dying, this still doesn't feel real. Magic, talking tattoos, empresses—it's almost out of a fairytale. A twisted fairytale that might not have a happy ending.

So I guess not really a fairytale after all.

"Rune," I ask, and I can feel the tattoo on my arm coming to life as he readies himself to answer me. "What did you do to make the empresses put you away in that crystal?"

"Soul gem," he corrects me. "It was not a natural crystal. It was a human-made gem created specifically to house powerful souls like mine." Now that his lecture on the differences between crystals and soul gems is finished, he finally gives me an answer, "I challenged them, and they did not appreciate it."

"You challenged them?" I squint at the ceiling. "What does that even mean?"

"It means I did not bow to them like every other soul in Laconia. I was powerful enough to face them without fear, without cowering and worshiping the ground they walk on, and they took the greatest offense to it."

"These empresses, are they evil or something?"

Rune is silent for a bit. It's times like this that it would be nice to be able to talk face-to-face, so I could judge his reactions to my questions. All I can get off him now is his tone. "When they locked me away, they were not as they used to be. They'd started going mad. Paranoid. They did not appreciate me or the threat I allegedly posed to them."

"You don't know how much time you were locked away? If these empresses are still out there?" Rulers gone mad… it's as believable as anything else, and the fact that they all have magic as well makes them look even more guilty.

"No. I can't say how long I was in that soul gem, or even how I arrived where you found me. Perhaps it was fate that brought us together."

"Maybe." Even as I say it, I don't know that I believe it. If fate is real, I have a few questions for it, such as why would it let my dad die on me when he was the only thing I had? Why let me go through the system, never knowing where I came from? If fate is real, then it's cruel and we are definitely not friends.

Fate can go fuck itself.

I ask Rune, "How do you remember all of this if you can't even remember your name?"

"The empresses locked me away. Perhaps they wanted to destroy everything I was, so they left me fractured, but intact enough to remember who the masters of my punishment were."

Lifting up my hand, I study the glowing mark on my wrist and hand. The same color as the magic that came out of me when the dog nearly got me. Almost like it's alive and has a mind of its own. "How old are you, Rune?" When I imagine a wizard, I picture that gray-bearded guy from The Lord of the Rings.

What was his name? Gerard? Gerald? Geralt? Hmm, no, those aren't it.

Anyway, my point is that when I picture a wizard's face, I imagine him old and kind of crusty. But, for some reason, when I heard Rune's voice, I don't picture him with a stomach-length beard and tons of wrinkles around his eyes.

I can't really picture Rune at all, actually.

"I… don't remember," Rune replies. "How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"So young. No wonder you want to get back to your world. Your family must be missing you."

I am only nineteen. I am young. The problem is I don't feel young. I never have. I'm one of those unfortunate people that life forced to grow up too soon. "I—" I stop myself from telling Rune that my dad is dead and I have no family because my mom up and left right after she had me.

Just because the dude is on my wrist doesn't mean we have to share everything.

I drop my arm and roll onto my side. "I'm tired. I need sleep."

Thankfully, Rune doesn't press me on the subject. He quiets, and I shut my eyes, waiting for sleep to come. Being trapped in a strange world that's beyond dangerous, you'd think I'd want to get to the bottom of things immediately, but right now my goal is the city of Laconia, and from what it sounds like, it's a lot farther of a hike than what I did today.

Plus, I've been up for forever. Got lots of shitty news. It isn't hard to see why I'm so damned tired.

Sleep comes, and when it does, I fall into it with open arms.