Shadows of the Strange Valley

Tabitha knew this was punishment for her misdeed. No other mage at the Institution had wanted to take the case. Its file had been sitting at the back of a drawer, catching dust, until the Board saw the perfect opportunity to get rid of both undesirables at the same time. As she was handed the report and given her mission, the tacit threat hung over her head like an executioner's axe: Solve this or don't even bother coming back.

This is as much retribution as it is a chance at redemption, Tabitha told herself as she boarded the train in San Francisco. A light in the dark!

But like all candles, it burned and waned the farther out East the train sped, leaving behind the green coast, and heading towards her axing block. A place where no one wanted to go, a truly untamable corner of the West, nestled in the North of the Mojave Desert where only those with no choice or sense still remained.

It was days before she reached her station, but not the end of her journey. She was one of the very few to get off and, she was sure, the only one to make for the stage couch, carrying her luggage and the last weak flickers of her motivation. Fairpost was the closest the railroad would get you, before it took an ample berth around the Strange Valley. It was the closest most were willing to come, and Tabitha had yet more land to cross.

The town was subdued, as if awaiting a storm, or waiting out a predator — making itself small, quiet, unnoticeable. Yet even in a place like this, the saloon shone like a beacon, spilling with cozy gold light and the off-tune music of the drunks. The few people she did see out where either milling by the patio of buildings, a step away from shelter, or walking with hasty steps and heads bowed. Tabitha quickened her own pace.

She was the only one to board the stagecoach. It was the last one as the day was nearing its end, too. The burly driver made no remark, but his pitiful look as he loaded her luggage said enough. Perhaps too much.

In the shuddering carriage, Tabitha went over the case's files yet again to pass the time. Her eyes glazed over neatly typed lines she'd already memorized on the train, yet she repeated them again and again as if preparing for an examination at the Institution.

Dread seeped into her as steadily as the carriage rode on, like poison spreading through her veins. Tabitha wasn't sure where it welled from — the dreary thing she was put up to, or a primal fear at the dangers she anticipated and the ones she couldn't fathom. She had wished to arrive before sun fall, a plan that was coming undone before her eyes. The sky was bleeding red, impaled by jutting, rocky mountains whose shadows stretched over miles of barren land. The warnings in the report were not reassuring towards her late arrival either.

But there was more to this unease. It was the place itself — the magic of it, to be more precise. A mage's training made one acute to magic in ways ordinary people couldn't comprehend; after all, manipulating magic took understanding it first. It's like any other science, her mentor once told her.

But none of the magic she'd encountered before felt like this. Wrong, like an instrument in inexperienced hands. Wrong, like a discordant chord, strum on the strings of her very core.

***

When the stagecoach finally arrived, the sun was long gone, the sky drained of its blood red. The driver didn't linger longer than was necessary, leaving Tabitha standing in the wake of his dust, facing off a town plunged in darkness and silence.

Oddplains, as close to the Strange Valley as it got, a town as big as its main street, surrounded by a sprawling wasteland and looming shadows of mountains. With no other option, Tabitha picked up her luggage and set off in the only direction she could go — forward.