The Raven And The Wraith (Completed!)

Chapter 12

The Wraith
Chapter 12

I walked for at least an hour, my night vision so acute it didn't matter that it was pitch black, with the heavy trees cloaking even the meager moonlight. I wandered, letting my instincts guide me wherever they may. Letting my mind wander just as aimlessly.

While my footsteps carried me deeper into the tangled, dark woods, my mind wandered down far darker paths. I thought about the fire of that unnatural hunger that had struck me twice now. And I thought about Genevieve.

I remembered meeting her for the first time. We had both been eleven years old. Both of us just past our first year at Crael Crest, the rocky island owned by the Council.

She had been competitive and aggressive even then. I had suspected those aspects of her personality would only grow with time. Her reward for my capture, and her sending Jewel after me, confirmed those suspicions.

As there had been no other youth there on the bleak, barren island, we had quickly decided to become friends, finding a kindred spirit in the other with our refusal to placidly obey our masters. The Council had their greatest sorcerers there, and they were unbendingly stiff, and strict to the point of disbelief.

I remembered the pain of what almost felt like betrayal when Genevieve had suddenly latched onto their ways with a fervent intensity. She had hurled herself headlong into their world with a focus and a strength of will that actually unnerved even the most powerful of the masters there.

Just over two years. That was the extent of my training. My education in magic and history and the world. And that was how I found myself standing before the Council nearly every day. Working what they considered impossible magic, so they could study it. So they could study me.

The final straw had been when I had finally tired of dancing for them. They tried everything they could to get me to obey. It was...nightmarish. Then they called Genevieve in.

She had known what I would hold precious. She had used that to get me to agree to their ridiculous requests. She had presented the throwing knives that had been my mothers, had promised that the Council would tell me more about her, if I would only comply.

Even at just twelve years old, I knew I was no ones puppet. I took the knives from her, they were rightfully mine, and I left. And the streets, as uncaring and cold as ever, became my home again. She had cried. She had begged. And, on my last night there, right as I slipped over the outer wall of Crael Crest, she had even tried to use her magic on me.

I had encountered all 7 Orders of magic in my two years there at Crael Crest. And the sorcerers who wielded them had been the best of the best. And none of them had ever been able to overpower me.

That final night, as I easily scaled the rough wall around the central keep, I experienced my first taste of magic as strong, and as strange, as mine.

My twelve-year old mind had been more curious than alarmed, at first, as I felt her ethereal touch. I knew it was her immediately, a recognition on a fundamental level, and so I had simply paused on top of the wall and waited, watching her magic wrap all around me.

I remembered her power, so close to the very core of who she was, making me blush brighter than I ever had before, as I watched. It was like by using the complete extent of her power on me, she was revealing her innermost secrets to me. Part of my stunned, confused thoughts had wondered if she even knew exactly how much she was revealing to me.

And then, in one searing instant, I had felt how she was trying to control me. How she was trying to link her power to mine. She had seen I was running away, and she was trying this magical abomination on me, to keep me under the Councils thumb.