Chapter Two


Larissa looked out through the window as she lay in her featherbed and gazed longingly at the stars. How peaceful it must be up there, she thought, nestled in the blanket of night, far away from the world and all of its troubles. The only care at all, the only concern, being to shine and be beautiful.

Larissa Rousseaux was now 17 sun-cycles*, and would soon be coming of age - on the 7th day of the new moon. But that wasn’t what was bothering her on this beautiful starry night. In fact, to most of the townspeople, it would seem that Larissa couldn’t possibly have a concern in the world.

Larissa was extremely lovely, standing 10 and ½ kalas tall**, and thin, but carried well the figure of her mother, who had turned every man’s head in town in her days. Her long auburn hair flowed past her breast to her waist, lying in soft shimmering curls that most of her girlfriends envied. Her face, soft and delicate of feature, and extremely feminine, was the perfect frame for her striking emerald-green eyes. The same eyes that hypnotized nearly every boy that got a chance to gaze into their unfathomable depths, every one of them certain that he saw his future in those nearly-magical eyes.

Besides her outer beauty, there was an inner beauty, undefined and immeasurable, and touching deeply, the spirit of anyone she met. Her father had told her often that she could charm the very fire out of a fevered dragon and leave him purring like a docile pussycat.

She did, in fact, have many suitors. The boys in town were constantly vieing for her attentions, and though she was always kind and polite to them, most of them were left in a wake of perfume with a broken, aching heart, as she went along her way with more important matters to attend to.

Those important matters were precisely what was troubling the young woman at the moment.

Larissa was an only child. Her mother, having died only a few moments after delivering Larissa, had left the girl’s father, Garyn, alone to raise and care for his tiny beloved child. This in itself, became an adventure for a young man that knew little to nothing about child-rearing, let alone babies, toddlers or worst of all, teenage girls. So Larissa was raised mostly on instinct and partially on the advice of every parent that Garyn had the pleasure of knowing. All in all, he had done quite well. Larissa was healthy, attractive, intelligent and kind.

She also had one thing her father did not teach her. Larissa was born with a natural ability. She “knew” things. She “felt” things. And somehow, she made things mysteriously “happen”. She never knew HOW she knew that something was about to happen. She just saw it in her head and it happened. Somehow, she seemed to know that certain people were bad or dangerous, and she knew how they were feeling, or rather, she felt what they were feeling, often to her disapproval.

Larissa was now under the proper tutelage of an old wizard who went by the name of Sarion. Sarion had a reasonably reputable “School of Sorceries and the Given Arts”, on the outskirts of town. Garyn had thought it wise after a particular incident when Larissa, a mere 4 sun-cycles, had decided that she was chilly and wanted to be warmer. She hadn’t done anything intentionally, but she had started a small fire in the cottage by the sheer thought of it, much to her surprise, fear and delight. Garyn had begun to clearly see the potential that she contained after the flames had been doused and the smoke cleared. Luckily, being young and untrained as she was, she had only caused only a very small fire and a bit of eye-watering, irritating smoke and Garyn had extinguished the fire and gotten them both out into the fresh air before any real damage could be done. Larissa had been both frightened and amused, unsure of what had happened, and a week later, she was enrolled in Sarion’s school of magick.

Right now though, Larissa was frightened by what she knew. For she knew that her father - her sweet, devoted father - was somewhere alone and in trouble, and she was beginning to fear the worst.

Garyn had left home on a mission for the High Council of Magick, one of the most prestigious and feared organizations in the realm. The council consisted of the greatest of wizards, sorcerers and alchemists known. Their work was highly secretive, and no one knew exactly what said or done in their council meetings. Those few that had tried to find out what went on inside their doors had inexplicably encountered strange accidents or hinderances that barred their even getting near to the stone quarters in which they met. For that reason, very few actually went out of their way to question their activities, and generally just avoided the whole area in general.

Larissa had never questioned her father’s work. He was a skilled alchemist and she had pushed him to teach her until she had learned all from him that he would allow her to know. She was quite adept at the craft herself, and used it to help the people in the town when she could. Her father taught her the use of chemicals and herbs, and persuaded her to practice her natural abilities as a healer that she had inherited from her mother, Leila. Larissa mended the injured and healed the sick as often as she could, and the townspeople adored her for it, as they had Leila before her. She made potions and other mysterious concoctions that her father had taught her, and her skill was growing with time and experience. But Larissa was beginning to question the missions the council sent her father on. He wouldn’t tell her what he was doing, only how long he would be gone, knowing she was old enough to care for herself when needed. When he left for the current mission, he promised her he would return in time for her coming-of-age celebration. “I will bring you back a glorious gift, worthy of a young woman ” he had told her, hugging her tightly and she had simply replied. “Just come home safely, Father. That is all I will ever need.” Even then she had a feeling of foreboding that she couldn’t shake.

It was late, and Larissa had class in the morning. She wiped a tear from her eye and tried for one brief moment to shut out the world, burying her head in her pillow. That brief moment was all she needed. Soon she was fast asleep.

And what Larissa dreamed about on that starry night frightened her more than anything she had ever known...

* ~ A sun cycle equals approximately 13 months standard Earth time
** ~Approximately 5 foot 7 inches by our current standards of measurement.