“Jane?” He whispered in shock.

Her blond curls fell behind her shoulders, resting on the clean-cut chainmail she wore beneath the cloak. Her hands were gauntleted with silver armor that let her palms and fingers bare.

Her brows were pleasant half-moons matching her bright smile in reverse. And she was smiling as she scanned the crowd for an empty table, oblivious to the change her entrance had brought.

James made to rise but a hand held him still. Behind him, Merek hissed close to his ear in alarm.

“What do you think you are doing? That is Lorella of Fire! Stay still, damn you.”

“Let me go!” James replied without taking his eyes off her. He swiped away the hand from his shoulder and hopped off the barstool.

He heard some unique nastiness coming from behind the bar. The profanities might have been a tad too loud in the now-hushed tavern hall because as James came forward, the cloaked woman turned her head and looked directly at him.

Her eyes had an angry orange hue that swirled and churned like two small lava craters. The eye contact lasted but a moment yet no recognition emerged on her face before she averted her sight to an empty spot in the hall where she chose to sit.

James however had frozen mid-step. The Jane Dole he knew didn’t have magical fiery eyes. He winced at the sound of the wooden floor creaking as he put his weight back on both feet. His heart ached in waves, an old familiar pain flared rhythmically with his breathing.

Jane Dole, his fiancee, ex-fiancee if he had to be truthful to himself. The story wasn’t one for the faint of heart. It was a story coming right out of a Greek tragedy.

Everything had happened abruptly, as it always did when life threw a curveball at you; On a warm summer day like any other, Jane went missing. The police organized searches that lasted days with no result. His nerves had been racking each day without a hint of her whereabouts. At some point, the local media got involved and there was some spotlight on the case and on his suffering.

They were living in London at that time, a big city, home to a lot of different voices. Some seemed to want to help. A few of them, however, in poor taste or to appease the hungry audience had fallen to cruel jokes, ‘What had happened to Jane Doe?’ they asked in jest.

In his darkest hours, the pain in his heart wasn’t enough for him. He needed something else to take the blame. As he took out his anger in the ring, he sealed his suffering inside a container of pain and hurt and waited for salvation.

The wait didn’t last long.

After months passed, the police notified him that there was a lead as to her fate. He rushed to a scene of a crime, a homeless man in custody, and the charred remains of a body that nobody could identify with certainty. They informed him the pile of ash and bones was hers and without further delay closed the case.

Since then he had never let himself believe in that fate. It was too cruel. A year later he left the UK for good.

Now past a decade and some change, she was sitting at a table placing her order to a vibrating bunny waitress, all but for her eyes were identical. She should have recognized him though.

Was it not her? Was it the cruel world showing him a fantom of the past to haunt him even in this fantasy world?

He shivered. He had to know. Before he realized it he was standing in front of the table, towering behind her sitting form.

She tossed her curls with a gauntleted hand and glanced above her shoulder, with a smile that never left her features.

“Yes?” She asked in a melodic voice that he so much remembered.

“Jane! How are you here? What happ…Where were you?” He asked and slumped in one of the chairs uncaringly.

The smell of ash hit him as she replied.

“Hi,” She giggled, “You are quite forward to sit without asking the lady properly. Crude, yet I don’t dislike it, you have some fire in you.” Her eyes were locked on him, swirling, burning clouds of fire.

“Jane… Do you not remember me?” He said and his stomach tightened.

“Oh, we haven’t met, it’s certain,” she tilted her head to the side, “There are no burns on your flesh marking our meet.” She smiled brightly at that, beating her eyelashes like a fair lady in love.

“What are you talking about? It’s me, James. You truly don't remember anything?”

James felt that there was something wrong with her. Not ‘I made a mistake and it’s another person’ wrong, but something’s going wrong-wrong in her head. Her behavior was not at all like the Jane he knew.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She extended her hand and he cautiously did likewise accepting the invitation. Her thumb pressed against the topside of his hand, just before the knuckles. His skin sizzled, and a painful sting as if he had just touched a lit kitchen stove made him pull it back sharply.

With surprise, he saw a burned marking of her thumb on his flesh, and then the pain of the wound hit him. He gulped the moan down his throat.

“Now I’ll remember you! You bear my mark,” She said giggling. “Do you know the owner? I need to tell him he’s been a bad bad boy.”

James was at a loss of words. He stared at her kind beautiful face that brought forth so many warm memories, touching deep within his soul, and then at the burned mark on his hand, painful and pulsing.

“Or better you tell him, so I can enjoy my drink! Yes, let’s do that. Tell him the Guild is watching. Tell him that. Mmm, mm.”

He clenched his right fist, feeling the skin stretch awkwardly around the wound.

—-

“You are insane,” Merek said exasperated, “She could have burned you to a crisp, or worse burn the whole place down with us still inside! What were you thinking?”

“I thought I knew her… from before; before I came to the city. But I'm not sure. It’s her and it’s not, do you know what I mean?” James placed a cold wet towel over his wound.

“You knew Lorella before she came to Avi’Gale? How are you still alive?” Merek asked pressing his lips in a grimace. “She is all but a raving lunatic. Scratch that, she is a raving lunatic.”

It had not been even a few minutes after she had left the tavern, absentmindedly holding the drink in her hand. Nobody had dared go after her to retrieve the cup.

Her absence had helped rekindle the lost bustle in the hall, with the patrons relaxing hand in hand with pints of ale they so eagerly needed, relieved to be out of her sight.

“She isn’t the same one...” At least that’s what he said, because he thought differently. It was difficult to put into words, but if Jane had an identical twin the likeness still wouldn’t confuse him as much as the supposed Lorella did. It was beyond him how he was unable to tell the difference between the two if they were not the same person. She had been his fiancee for Christ's sake. He knew her, no matter the decade that had passed since then.

“...And she said that the Guild is watching. She came with this warning for you. A drink please, Merek, I need it right now.”

The bald bartender appraised him for a moment longer before nodding and filling another pint. He didn’t pass it on to him yet but brought forth a bottle from under the counter and added a shot’s worth of liquid into the pint.

“For the kick,” Merek said with a half-hearted wink. Then he sighed heavily, letting the air blow out in a prolonged exhale.

“I’m still furious you approached her despite my warning. You put all of us in danger with your careless actions,” Merek complained rubbing at his temples with one hand, “but it seems there are a lot of complications to consider. The mess with the Guild is on me, I never expected them to send someone like Lorella of Fire, who's not subtle with her actions. It seems they aren’t afraid to start trouble even inside Kirk’s domain territory.”

James was still feeling raw. His adrenaline had been on overdrive today. Farming fghels in the morning and now this? He wasn’t in a state to sit and think calmly. There was a cloud merged someplace in his skull making his every thought slow and hazy.

“What will happen now?” He asked just to put a direction to the conversation.

“We will keep our heads down, that will happen! And for whatever reason you will not get into contact with that fire-loving, mad-raving, guild dog; Not if you want to work here any longer.” He warned him with his brows furrowed.

James considered it. If this was genuinely Jane there was not one chance in a billion that he would not try to understand what had happened to her, to see if she was alright. Not to get back together again, not that, a lot of time had passed for it to make a difference now, but for his closure, her sake, and the unjust world, he would throw that curveball right back at it if given the chance.

“I understand,” He said. After all, there were other ways to find the information he sought besides direct contact, he could keep some distance until he found out more. “Why do they call her that though? Of fire? What does it mean?”

The bartender combed his grey beard with his fingers, pulling at it a tad too forcefully. He pointed with a slight nod of his head to the burned mark on his hand. “You felt from up close why they call her that. But if you want the simplest explanation, she is blessed by fire, and like fire she burns any who are unfortunate to be in her proximity.”

Involuntarily his mind brought forth an image he had long since tried to forget. The charred bones back in London couldn’t have been her. Jane, Lorella, and the fire. Was it all a coincidence?

“Omny will be quite mad too. You better not let her see the mark.” Merek continued in a flat tone.

The mention of the ferocious cult leader brought him back. “Mad, why mad?” As if things were not complicated enough. What else was there for him to worry about?

“The marking on your hand–another has set a claim over you now. And a cult is very possessive of its members.” There was a bit of concern in the bartender's voice.

James lifted the towel to look at the thumbprint that had formed an angry inflated blister. “This thing?” he asked.

“Yes, that little thing will bring you much trouble,” Merek said considering the implications but avoiding to voice any of them.

When he noticed Martha standing quietly nearby, he busied himself with the runnings of the bar, leaving James to worry all by himself.

“Will the dangerous lady come back? Martha feels embarrassed to say but she is scared.” The little waitress asked holding the tray in front of her snout, with her large black-blue eyes visible above it, and her long ears lying lifeless.

“I don’t know if she will. But if anything should happen, I’ll be there right before you. You have nothing to worry about from anyone.” he said with a smile that only touched the surface of his skin. He didn’t feel like smiling at all at that moment.

Nevertheless, a scared rabbit wanted his assurances and he tried his best to give them. As Martha frantically looked in every direction at once, his words did help settle her somewhat. It must be hard to be able to hear every single conversation in the tavern at will. If she hadn't been aware, the conversation he just had had must have spooked her out of her fur.

“There is nothing to worry about,” He repeated. Somewhat to himself.