God Bones

Chapter 0: The Sister

Seraphina

The animal refused to enter the room.

Sera let him wait outside and entered the office by herself. Some guard dog she had. Her puppy was a retired police dog, but from the way he sat whimpering outside the door, you'd have guessed he was a poodle. Probably because of the magic.

Dogs were very perceptive to magic, more than a sorceress like herself and as far as sorcerers go, she was one of the powerful ones. These days she wasn't feeling too powerful though. She felt hopeless, she was fighting an uphill battle and failure after failure had created a huge burden on her conscience.

So even though her dog had warned her, she stepped inside the room. Maybe there was an iota of luck for her in there.

The office didn't seem strange from the outside. The desk was clean, the papers were neatly stacked on the left corner. Not a single thing seemed amiss, but then again, things rarely did when it came to the people she was dealing with. She doubted she'd even find any evidence, just like the last two.

She stepped inside, her shoes barely making a sound on the grey carpeted floor. The curtains were drawn but some of the evening light still slipped through, illuminating the room. Sera swiped her finger across one of the books and saw that there was no dust. The professor could not have left that long ago. Maybe he realized he was in danger and took off. It would have been smart of him and though it would be a pain to track him down, Sera wished that was the case. She'd seen the death of enough innocents and she was getting depressed. Seeing people go missing day after day and she could do nothing to protect them, they always slipped away like sand through her fingers. Every damn time.

These disappearances hit closer to home than she liked. Her own human sister was a historian, just like these missing people.

There were no immediate clues as to what he was working on before he disappeared and she had no doubt that his work was of paramount importance, not just for her, but her whole family. Sera sat down in his chair and rifled through the papers on his desk, most of them consisted of mundane day to day activity, exam papers of his students, invoices, letters from conferences on Aegean Bronze Age. In a nutshell, nothing she could make sense of, hence nothing of interest, but she decided to take them anyway. Maybe someone else would find something, perhaps Lucy could, though Sera wanted to keep her far from the affairs of the Family. Her sister was a university student, gentle as a butterfly, but the most intelligent and well read person she knew. She stuffed the papers into her backpack.

Sera switched on the small lamp above the desk and stood up to search the rest of the room.

That's when Sera noticed the traces of magic.

The air tasted of iron and metal, and smelled of ozone, like the smoke of an electric fire.

Sera hadn't encountered such magic before in her life but somehow she instantly knew what it was what she suspected it to be.

Death magic.

A chill crept up her spine. She could feel the magic making its way into her lungs and she knew then that this room, that had been the professor's office just days before had borne witness to his demise. And now she'd stayed too long, this place was too dangerous, the death magic lingering within the space could kill anyone who stepped in withing mere minutes. She had to get out immediately.

She had a lot less time than she thought, with the magic slowly laying claim on her life with its icy fingers, she decided to run. The death spell was deadly, even to her and she knew of no magic that cout counteract it. But it was far too late. The room grew dim, or maybe it was just her vision. She couldn't tell apart the shadows from the rest of the office. The shadows looked sinister and Sera could swear they moved. The smell of the magic was even stronger now and soon she was coughing, sharp pains went through her chest and it felt like her lungs had given up. Her fingers grasped at her throat as if tearing it would let the air in again. She coughed, and saw blood drip down her chin and on the floor. She crouched down and made a desperate attempt to dig inside, to summon her magic to heal herself, but her magic refused to rise.

It wasnt long before her legs gave away and she collapsed.

And that's when she knew she was dying. There was no escape. She thought about her family, wondered if they'd ever find her here.

Seraphina did the only thing she could think of doing. She prayed.

The last thing she heard before passing was her dog barking at the door.

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