After failing to leave the veil, the party somberly made their way back to the keep in Mireholm. None of them had any idea what the mirror image leaving the veil meant. Even Mathias, who had read every book he’d ever come across, didn’t know what it meant. Was there an arrow and another Lena beyond the veil? Was it just showing them their desire for escape? They had talked about it all the way back to the castle, and they couldn’t agree. What they did know was that they needed to find Faro and Veronica and come up with a plan to get Umbra to release them from this prison.

They didn’t even have to get beyond the courtyard before Faro found them and greeted them. “Hey! Where have you all been? I’ve been looking all over the keep for you. Thought you’d taken Veronica and left without me!” he called to them.

He met them in the middle of the courtyard by the statue of Solana. “We didn't leave you, friend,” said Mathias. “We've just been testing what Umbra told us about us being trapped here!”

“And?” asked Faro, looking concerned.

“We are,” chimed in Tobi. “Some weird spell over the whole place. We're stuck until our gracious host lets us leave. Or maybe,” he added as he picked up his axe and made a quick swinging motion with it through the air.

Lena rolled her eyes at him. “We're definitely not going to kill my father,” she said. “End of story.”

“Just saying. It would likely break the spell!” Tobi answered back. “No? Fine. What's your plan then?”

Lena thought for a moment. “We have to wait a bit longer. Play his game. He cares about me too much to hurt me or any of you. He'll give us the answers we need and let us go in due time.”

The others didn't look so sure about that. All except for Faro who just smiled at her. “Always so patient, Lena. I like that plan,” he said, clapping his paw together. “That said, I need to go and get some rest. I haven’t been feeling the best lately, and my big, comfortable bed is calling my name. I hope you all understand.”

With that he turned from them and disappeared into the keep. Tobi pointed his thumb after Faro and raised an eyebrow at Thora, who shrugged. “Maybe he ate some bad fish. The food has been tasting a little weirder to me lately, too.”

***

It was four days later when Umbra sent Skye to get them from their rooms and invite them down to a dinner with the promise of the news they'd been waiting for. It had been a long, angst-filled wait, and Lena was glad it was finally over. Now she paced back and forth by the dining table, too anxious to sit and eat anything.

Tobi sat down at the table, also unable to touch any of the food. Instead he had a steak knife in his hand and was whittling away at the grand wooden table, trying to calm his nerves. Thora sat next to him, enjoying an apple, while Mathias worked his way through a large slice of rhubarb pie.

Faro was ravenously devouring any meat at the table he could get his hands on, which was currently a large chicken breast. He had hidden in his room for the past four days, calling out to them that he still wasn't feeling well. Now it appeared that he was a lot better and finally ready to eat again, his appetite back in full force after being sick.

Lena was anxious to see her father. They still hadn’t seen any trace of Veronica since they got here, and it was unnerving her to still be in her childhood home, even though it was a place that was completely different. She was still pacing when she heard the grating voice of her father enter the room behind her. She flinched at the sound, no longer feeling the safe warmth and comfort she once felt as a child at hearing it.

“Greetings, my friends,” he said as he glided into the room to stand by them. “I apologize for all the theatrics. You were going to leave, and I feel like the answers you seek are important, as is my mission to right what I’ve done wrong and help free Evania from yet another tyrant.”

Lena scoffed. “We don’t care about your mission. We just want whatever information you have about our visions, and for you to let us take Veronica and go home. Where has she been, by the way? We haven’t seen her in almost two weeks now.”

Umbra raised his hands, trying to gesture for his daughter to be calm, but she was anything but calm right now. “Veronica is fine. I told you, she’s been studying. Not much else for a kid to do here, truth be told.”

“Ok,” Thora chimed in. Her and Mathias had just split another piece of pie as Thora only wanted half and Mathias couldn’t get enough. “She’ll be ready to go then, as soon as you’ve told us about our visions.”

Umbra heaved a sigh and his face fell. Lena braced herself for getting no news at all again. Instead she was surprised as her father began to talk.

“I finally had a vision that connected with the man that you all saw in your vision,” he said with dramatic flair. He paused for dramatic effect and they all stared at him intently.

“And?” asked Tobi, angrily driving the steak knife further into the table.

“And,” Umbra continued, “I saw him in a time long, long ago. He was inside Mt. Fluore, surrounded by all manner of soldiers and royals. Constantine Evania was on the throne, offering this man a golden scepter embedded with a subfluore crystal on top. Constantine ruled over a thousand years ago, and from what I can tell this was a ceremony of great honor.”

“Honor? What kind of honor?” Mathias asked around a mouthful of rhubarb pie. “Doesn’t quite sound like a knighting ceremony.”

“Quite right,” said Umbra. “From my studies I've gathered that these Scepters of Solana were given only to the highest paladins in the land. Only those trusted with the highest secrets and powers of Solana's Light were tasked with protecting it as such.”

“What kind of powers?” asked Lena, intrigued.

Umbra thought for a moment as if he wasn't sure if he should say what he was about to say. When he spoke, it was almost a whisper. They all had to lean in to hear him properly. “They say that those who wield these scepters have power over space and time.”

“Like, they can travel through time and teleport around Evania?” asked Thora in awe.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The old elf king shook his head. “Yes. That is the rumor anyways. And seeing as you all had a vision of this man, hundreds of years apart in Lena's case, it only makes sense that the rumor is true. I've only dreamed of such power. Nothing I was ever allowed to attain. It is only given to a select few.”

They all waited for there to be more to the story, but Umbra didn't continue. Finally, getting impatient, Tobi broke the silence. “What else is there? What else did you see?”

“Well, not much I'm afraid,” said Umbra. “Only that Constantine called him Therik.”

Lena raised her eyebrows at her father. “That's all you've got?” she asked incredulously.

“I'm afraid so, dear. It was the damnedest thing. There I was,” Umbra said, picking up his dramatic flair again, “watching Therik’s ceremony like I was there in attendance. Constantine gives him his staff, pronounces him a ‘Great Gift of Solana’, and then Therik turned to look at me.”

“How could he look at you?” Thora blurted. “It was a long time ago and it was just a vision.”

Umbra shrugged. “No idea. Never experienced anything like it. He looked at me, smiled, and then the vision went blurry. I snapped back to the present, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get back to the vision of the ceremony. It was like he had kicked me out.”

They all stared at each other in confusion. “What does it mean?” Lena asked.

“It means,” said Umbra, looking concerned, “this man has great power and has brought you all together for reasons unknown. I don't trust someone with this much power. I must continue with my own preparations. Lena…”

“If this is another pitch to get me on board with whatever dark plot you have going on, it's not going to work, father,” said Lena with a look of disgust on her face.

Umbra sighed. “This is the last time I'm asking,” he said to her pointedly.

Lena shrugged. “We're going to spend a few days packing rations and preparing for our departure, and then we’re leaving. I hope you right whatever wrongs are troubling you, father, but we’re not going to be here for it. I hope you have the decency to lower the veil and let us out when we leave this time.”

All Umbra could do is watch in silence as his daughter beckoned her friends to get up and follow her out of the room. Tobi embedded his knife into the table with a thunk, twisting it for good measure, and the others set down the food they were eating. They all fell in line behind her and left the king without another word.

Umbra heaved a sigh and walked around the table to where Tobi had been sitting. He pulled the knife out of his ornate table. He looked down at what the dwarf had been carving there. It said ‘Fuck You’.

He ran a finger over the jagged letters, marveling at the crudeness of mortal defiance. “How quaint,” said Umbra with a smile, pocketing the knife as he turned to leave the room in the other direction.

***

The dark chamber was lit by a single subfluore crystal. Umbra knelt down on the floor in the middle of a circle he had etched in the ground with magic many years before. Within the circle were all manner of runes that Umbra had learned about in ancient texts that were filled with ways to worship the dark God Baladan.

Umbra had discovered the dark magic while he was still living in Zelira. When his wife had found out what he had done and who he was working with, that had been their final falling out. The falling out that had caused him to fall into a rage and rip a copy of the kingdom out and away into the first place his mind was thinking of, the grand pastures of the Academy of Solana’s Light. It was here that his new dark kingdom had planted itself with such force that the very ground rose up to the sky. It was better this way. Zelira would never understand his lifelong frustration of being denied the highest ranks of Solana’s Light. Going into dark magic was his only option to gain the power he needed.

His fingers traced the runes on the floor as he said the enchantment. He remembered being so nervous the first time he had done this, not sure what was going to happen, or what was going to come through. Now it was a habit, as he had taken and enacted the guidance of the being from beyond numerous times. He had even taught his son the ways of Baladan, and the true power that could be harnessed if you drove the traditional ideas of good and evil from your mind. Instead it was more the mindset of power versus weakness. Taking things as they were, versus enacting the change you wanted to see in the world. He just wished his daughter could think like that as well.

After tracing the last rune and uttering the last words, Umbra changed his position to one of kneeling on both knees to one, and rested his arm on his raised knee. It was the submissive form he read that he should take or else face the wrath of those that he was contacting.

The runes on the ground began to glow purple. The air in front of him began to hum and vibrate as a small purple ring of light appeared in the air. Umbra glanced up to see it, not risking moving his head too much. Through the growing circle he could see a different chamber, a different world even. It looked to be some kind of study, a place of learning and reflection, but everything was very dark and metallic. The purple energy circle grew into a full, tall oval, and Umbra averted his gaze.

Within seconds a tall and ominous figure appeared on the other side. It was a slender humanoid figure, except something was terribly wrong with it. Where a human head would normally be was the long, drawn out face of a dark horse. The same face that perched above his throne up in the main keep, always looking down on him and his rule here. Always watching. His patron.

“You have summoned Sydon,” the horse-man said in a low, hushed whisper that still seemed to echo throughout the chamber. “What is it you need, King Umbra?” it asked, putting an emphasis on the word ‘king’ that suggested it thought the title a little bit funny. It folded its black robed arms across its chest, staring judgment down on Umbra.

“Great Sydon!” Umbra called up to his patron. Umbra hated being subservient to anything, but this was the only way he’d figured out how to access the dark ways of Virmorphia at this level. “My daughter isn’t willing to comply with our needs. The little girl, Veronica, isn’t strong enough for what we need. I’m out of options.”

Sydon glared down at Umbra with his black eyes. “You are not out of options. You know what you have to do now. If you want to defeat this new, weak, King Eli, you have to wield the ultimate power of Solana’s Light and Virmorphia. You have to get Solana's Light by any means necessary.”

Umbra knew what Sydon wanted, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Yes, but…”

“Do you question your patron?” Sydon raised his voice at him.

“No! No, my lord,” Umbra stammered back, not daring to leave his kneeling position. He dipped his head a little lower to the ground.

“Good,” Sydon whispered. “Then capture her, and drain her of Solana’s Light. You will not be able to charge the Charred Scepter to work for you if you don't have equal parts of both types of magic.”

Umbra nodded, still bowed. The Charred Scepter was a magical item that he had to recover to prove his worth to Sydon and gain his Virmorphia magic. It was held within the depths of Dracaryn, the land of dragons. He’d even come back with a bonus, a bog troll he’d faced in the swamps South of the Dragon Kingdom.

“Yes, my lord,” Umbra said, though he wasn’t feeling happy about what had to be done.

Sydon clenched a fist and looked upwards as if looking into the future. “Once you have the scepter and the means to wield light and dark, nothing will be able to stand in your way. You will be the new ruler of Evania, and a proper reign will finally begin. A reign backed by me, instead of Glaryn.” Umbra winced at the sound of the name of the other patron that backed his son on top of Mt. Fluore. “Eldryn and Glaryn will die along with the false king.”

A gasping sound could be heard behind Umbra. He quickly turned to see what it was. Sydon starred at the spot the sound was coming from as well. There was nothing there, but having just been kicked out of a vision himself, he knew that someone was watching them from afar.

Umbra heard Sydon whisper something from behind him, and purple light flew over Umbra’s shoulder and into the darkness.

***

Lena sat up in bed, gasping, her forehead wet with a cool sweat she had worked up while sleeping. What she had seen had been unbelievable. Her father working with a demon, doing its bidding. She knew he had ventured into dark magic, but this was a whole other level. And her brother Eldryn was apparently heading down a similar path.

She threw the blankets off of herself and began to dress. If the vision was real, it meant that her father was talking to his patron right now. Throwing on her lavender-colored robe, she slung her bow and sheathed her swords.

It was time to confront her father and get out of Mireholm once and for all. If he wanted to drain her of her magic and kill her, it was time to strike first. It was time to wake the others.