The Magic Mirror

Heart to Heart

"You're alive!" she gasped.

"Yes yes, and keep it down- please. The guards around here do have ears," Fier hissed.

Audrin lowered her voice.

"You mean the guards of the dungeon that you're being held in?" she asked, unable to keep the accusation out of her whisper. "Fier."

"Uh... yes," the voice replied. "What's going on, are you still with the bandits?"

"No," she huffed. "I'm with Sir Marcos- I believe he's a friend of yours and he told me that you're not a ring at all! That you're a person! Just when were you going to mention this?"

Silence. Then a heavy sigh.

"Audrin," Fier's voice had the quality of patience running thin which Audrin was quite accustomed to. "I've been saying that I'm not a ring from the start- If you would only listen instead of jumping ahead of yourself you would have known that already."

Audrin mulled it over.

"Your reasoning is sound," she said after a moment. "I'll let it slide just this once."

"Right, what ever," Fier muttered. "You said something about Sir Marcos, I want you to give him the ring."

Audrin looked over the fire to the faint forms of Sir Marcos, Bridgette and little Claude asleep on the ground.. then she looked at the ring, still tightly fixed to her finger, and then back across the flames.

"I can't," she said.

"What do you mean you can't?"

"Uh.." she laughed lightly. "It's night time, he's asleep. I'll do it in the morning."

"Audrin.." he growled.

"Oh, look at the time, I'm tired! Goodnight!" Audrin quickly threw herself back on to the ground and closed her eyes tightly.

"I know you're awake!" Fier snapped. "Hey! I heard you and that little Inkling's heart to heart- this is not some journey for a silly girl with twigs in her hair to find her place in the world! I'm in serious trouble here! You can go on some different quest to toss carrots as dragons or.. or give chickens to witches or what ever it is you do! But you have to wake up Marcos this instant..."

He ranted for a while but Audrin was no stranger to this advanced avoidance technique. She had used it at least eleven times between her parents and her siblings and after an hour of Fier going through the most base of attempts to get her attention he gave up and all that was left to listen to was the night ambiance of crickets and wind in the trees.

---The Next Morning In Evodos---

Niarosa pulled on the hood to her white cloak and hugged her parents goodbye with a kiss on each of their cheeks. The golden dawn illuminated the sloping hill that Evodos was on and glazed the sides of white washed buildings and the tops of thatched roofs with pale, yellow light.  The road was a straight one, right out of town, and Niarosa had much more confidence in it then her parents did, as evidenced by her mother's frantic twattering as she tried to leave.

“You'll freckle and fry in that sun! Niarosa- if this doesn't work we will be poor and YOU will be doomed to never marry.”

“People with freckles and sunburns get married too, mother,” Niarosa reassured. “Besides. I'm not going to fail.”

“You don't know that sweet pea!” her mother said. “Nobody even knows where the lair is!”

Niarosa walked up to her chestnut horse and pat it on the neck gently. She proceeded to the black polished saddle on it's back where she pulled on the saddle bags. They didn't budge. She nodded, satisfied by the test and turned back to her mother with a matter-of-fact-ness to the way she rubbed her hands together and looked at the sky.

“It's really very simple, mother,” she said.  “When Fier was captured the birds flocked into the air and flew North East... it is reasonable, therefor, to assume that the lair is also North East.”

"Oh," Niarosa's mother was not convinced. She turned to Niarosa's father sharply. "Say something, please!"

"Listen to your mother, sweet pea," Niarosa's father muttered sleepily and sipped from his morning cup of tea, blinking his tired eyes.

"I love you both," Niarosa told them. "I'll be back as soon as I can and we will be wealthier than we ever were before."

She lifted herself onto the horse and swung a leg over the saddle, in this she was glad she had won the fight in which her mother wanted her dressed in another enormous gown. She had instead put on her riding pants and boots.

"Most unlady like indeed," she heard her mother sniff. "Hasn't anyone ever told you how to ride horse as a lady?"

"Mother, I'll be fine," Niarosa said again. She gave a final wave to her parents and clicked her tongue. "C'mon Sweet Vengeance!" she said to her horse.

 As she rode out of town she felt the stone in her pocket. She had been checking it like this every five minutes since she had decided to leave. But she found it strange that such a stone was worth all this fuss. Yes it was stunning in appearance but in everything else it seemed like a normal, unremarkable stone. Far be it from her to understand the ways of sorcerers, however, she herself had never taken the slightest interest in the art. Money- on the other hand- was something that she understood quite well. So she let the stone fall back into her pocket and rode down the road, away from her family, away from her life and on towards the lair of the evil sorcerer Graves.