House of Hunters

Chapter 2 - Escapees

I stagger back in shock, the weight of the bird is too much for me.

A crow! This isn't possible! Under the normal laws of magic, a mage always bonds with a Strix on their 20th birth year or not at all. Never a crow!

The laws of magic never waver. Yet here I am, with a crow on my shoulder.

For a brief moment, it's just me and the crow. We're locked in each others gaze and I can't help but feel a strange kind of relief. Dust particles of every colour explode around us but I can't move.

"Who are you?" I manage to choke out, my voice barely above a whisper.

The crow tilts its head, its gaze unrelenting. "I am your other soul, Gilbert," it replies in a voice that seems to echo from the depths of a bottomless pit.

"No, who are you," I say again.

"I am Corveus. I am the darkness that resides within you. I am the shadow that has been waiting for you to embrace it."

"Shadow?"

"You are not like the others. You are not good..." The bird hops down my arm and rests on my hand. "Or pure."

It twitches its gray eyes in a menacing manner.

My eyes dart back and forth, searching the crow for answers that don't seem to be coming out of its mouth fast enough. Darkness? What dark secrets lay hidden within me that this creature has decided to seek out?

"I have no darkness." My brow furrows.

The crow chuckles. "Oh yes. I have been sent to find you."

I scowl. "By who!?"

Before the bird can answer me, a sudden gust of wind blows through the ballroom, extinguishing all the twinkling fairy lights and plunging the room into darkness. The fairies have scattered, taking with them their magic. Wizard duels were never something fairies wanted to be involved in; it messed with the control of their magic. 

The only source of light now comes from the eerie residues of spells that continue to explode around us, but never manage to hit us.

The bird's eye twitches again. "Embrace the darkness, Gilbert."

The chaos around us intensifies as the other mages try to regain control of the situation. Spells crackle through the air, illuminating the room in brief flashes of light before dissipating into nothingness but plumes of red, yellow, purple and blue.

In the midst of the chaos, I lock eyes with Maria. Her green dress is alive, the gold embroidery twisting themselves into vines that constrict around her. Her copper hair is alive and standing on their ends so that it makes a crown. Her hands swirl elegantly and fiercely around themselves, forming a ball of pure white flame.

The ball slowly turns from a burning white to an emerald green. She's building an elimination spell and I'm the target.

I feel a surge of panic as I realize Maria's intentions. The familiar warmth of mage kinship is replaced by a chilling dread that grips my heart like iron claws. The aura around her crackles with power, and her eyes gleam with determination.

With trembling hands, I gather my own energy, forming a shield of shimmering light around me. 

Maria's emerald flame hurtles toward me, its heat searing the air in its path like a knife. I brace myself, pouring every ounce of concentration into reinforcing my barrier.

The green ball of heat collides with the shield creating an explosion of light. The collision is deafening, a boom of clashing energies that reverberates through the room and shakes the walls. Cracks begin to form and zigzag their way down the walls, letting bits of rubble crumble away.